Images of Broken Light
by Godelot
Summary: 1976. Eglantine Bertrand's uncle Crevan is still dead, and part of her is compelled to find out by whom. She's also compelled to ignore Sirius Black (and his romantic activities), although it's certainly NOT because she cares what he's doing. Not at all. OC
1. Chapter 1

one

Sixteen-year-old Eglantine Bertrand had never been entirely sure that it was legal for her to drive, but legality was not a particular concern of hers as she wended her way through the heavily-rutted cow roads that served as a frequent shortcut to her uncle Crevan's open fields. You couldn't always do what was legal, and anyway, legal didn't mean "safe." Her brother Bertie had always done what was legal, and he was dead.

Maybe one day she would just be driving down the street and inadvertently run over the bastards who killed him. That'd be nice: karma literally doing them in, in the form of a ten-year-old Muggle machine painted a nauseous shade of pumpkin. It'd be poetic justice. Or maybe she would just learn how to kill them herself.

She hit a straight, flat stretch of dirt road and sped up. The engine of the Sunbeam Alpine roared, and her sister Camilla – she'd entirely forgotten that Cam was even there – gasped and tensed up. Her blue eyes were as wide as if she'd just seen a dragon.

"Slow down, Tina! You'll crash."

"Into what, exactly?" she snapped. "We're in an open field."

"I dunno. Trees," Cam muttered sullenly. "How can you see anything?"

"The headlights, obviously."

Cam sighed. She'd never ridden in the car before, and Eglantine thought it would probably take some persuading for her to try it again. "They're not bright enough. This is weird. I don't like it."

"Merlin's beard, Cam, it's safer than a broom. Think about it – no possibility of getting struck by lightning, or having a bird fly into your head, or being sucked into an airplane's engine, or even having a bug fly up your nose."

"We're on the ground. It's _rumbly. _It's not natural."

"The fact that you're twenty-one years old and still wearing the same Alice band you wore when you were ten, that'snot natural." Eglantine mashed the button to turn the radio on, and the opening bars of Baba O'Riley flooded the car. "This is what's called _fun_."

Cam didn't say anything as Eglantine attempted donuts in the field, and rolled the windows down and sang along with The Who, "_We're all wasted!" _She simply sat there, silent, gripping the seat and trying not to scream.

"Get the stick out of your ass and enjoy it, would you?"

"I have to _work _tomorrow," Cam said testily. "I have to be home by nine-thirty at least."

"So go home. Nobody's stopping you."

"Are you mad? I can't just leave you here in the middle of a field in this Muggle death machine. It'll explode or something, and then Mum will make _me _explode, after she made me explain where you got the car, who enchanted it so Crevan and Alya couldn't see it, and why we were joyriding like maniacs across his fields. And," she added as an afterthought, "I'd most definitely lose my job."

"First of all, these things don't explode; only in the movies. But you've only ever seen _Singin' in the Rain_, so I don't know what you're so scared of. And secondly, you work for Mel. She's not about to see her own cousin fired because you stayed out past nine-thirty with your own sister and _maybe _had a little fun and _maybe _showed up late to work."

"You didn't say anything about me being _late_ to work when you asked me to come out with you! Why on earth am I going to be late?"

Eglantine grinned.

"Come on, Tina, I hate it when you smile like that. It means you're up to something. What are you going to make me do?" She gasped. "_No_. I am _not _going to a disco with you again. That was _awful_."

"You're the only person I know who can call fun _awful_. We got to meet a band!"

"Correction, you made out with a band. Ugh." Cam shuddered. "He _smelled_. And he was all tattooed and just…_disgusting_. He kept calling me 'mate.' I'm not his mate! Nor did I want to mate _with _him. And we nearly had the brooms stolen." Cam was already taking off her Alice band in a resigned sort of way, shaking her hair out and reaching for her purse to start applying makeup – Eglantine thought that some private part of Cam actually _did _want to go to the disco. Personally, she'd wanted to go to the cinema, but what the hell.

"I didn't think he was that exceptional either way." Eglantine went up a gear and made towards the main road. "I don't even remember his name."

"And I didn't get the glitter out of my hair for—" Cam put her purse down. "Stop. I'm serious, stop the car."

She held out her arm, and, obediently, Eglantine stopped, because now that she wasn't looking at the road, she saw what Cam saw. Above the silhouette of their uncle's estate, black and distant now against the navy sky, there had just shot up a dazzling green Dark Mark, shimmering in the sky like lingering fireworks.

Cam sat back in her seat, deflated, staring at the house. She only stared that intensely at something when she was deciding: it was a harder version of the same stare she had when trying to choose a robe. Eglantine had also seen her stare like that after Bertie died: Cam had said that she was trying to decide whether or not it was worth it to keep living.

"You're not thinking of going in, are you?" Eglantine said, swallowing hard. Her mouth was suddenly dry. She turned down The Who; the song was fading out. "We should get the Aurors."

"Why? They usually only put that Mark up when they're leaving, don't they? It's probably pointless to go in." Cam sighed. "And, if it's not, it's like walking to our own deaths. On the other hand, they might still be in there. They _might _be the same people who killed Bertie."

"They're probably not—"

"But what if they _are_? That's it." Cam shoved the Alice band back on, getting the hair out of her eyes, and took her wand out. "Let me out of this stupid thing. I'm going in."

"Oh, no you aren't. Not alone."

"Why not? I'm capable."

"So was Bertie, you idiot. He was more capable than the both of us put together, and they _still _killed him. You don't know how many people are in there – it could be three, or thirty! Don't walk into a fight with blinders on."

Cam frowned. "I don't care what you say, I'm going in. Come with me or not, your choice."

After a brief fight with the lock, Cam got out of the car. In the stark glow from the headlights, Eglantine could see her sister's blue jeans and peasant top disappearing behind the hedgerow. She sighed. What could _she _do, other than act as Cam's human shield? She couldn't do magic out of school; she'd get expelled. Although, if she were in a situation where she had to use magic, she'd probably wind up dead anyway.

Shaking her head—this was most certainly _not _the movies, or even a disco—Eglantine got out of the car herself and jogged after Cam.

The massive bulk of Crevan's manor was imposing and silent; all the windows save one, the library, were dark. Even the kitchens in the basement were dim, lit only by candles: the elves would still be cleaning the day's mess, but Crevan had become so stingy he hated for them to use his oil lamps for such a chore. The sisters crouched behind the boxwoods that encircled the lawn near the door and debated which entrance to use: there was the front entry, that led into Crevan's beloved foyer; the east entry, which was located beneath a portico and led into, by way of a smaller foyer, the ballroom; and the west entry, which led (via yet another small foyer) to the morning room, parlor, and library. Cam voted for the west entry, which was the most direct route; Eglantine voted for the east, so they could potentially creep up on whatever Death Eaters might be in there from an angle from which they wouldn't be expecting attack.

"What about aunt Alya? D'you think she's still in there?" whispered Cam. "Or do you think she's dead, too?"

"I think she's in on it. I'd be shocked if she didn't sell out her own husband. You can't honestly think that uncle Crevan wasn't one, with all those shady mates of his. And that this isn't because he's outworn his usefulness."

"Well, what about us? If that's the case, we're probably only safe because of him. If he is…you know…he's probably told them to leave us alone, and if they've turned on him, what reason do they have not to just blast us all to bits?"

Eglantine snorted. "He wouldn't have protected _us_. Are you kidding? Think about it – if he had, Bertie would still be alive. It's just that we've not done anything interesting, and they've probably forgotten we even exist. But if we start barging in there too loudly, they're bound to off us without even a thought. We shouldn't be in _front _of the house right now, we should be creeping in somewhere they wouldn't expect us."

"Why are you so _convinced _that our uncle was a Death Eater? Honestly, Tina, your imagination sometimes."

Cam made a stubborn face that Eglantine knew signified the end of all rational conversation. For such a prissy, Alice-band wearing, fun-killer, Cam was tougher than either of Eglantine's brothers had been. Also, Eglantine thought, far more stupid.

"We'll take the east entry, like you wanted. Let's go," said Cam.

They moved slowly across the lawn, trying to stay behind bushes and plants. As they approached the entrance, Eglantine said that it was almost certain they'd have gone by now, but Cam still insisted that they go in and assess the situation. Cam opened the door, and they crept silently inside.

It was pitch dark, except for the faint moonlight from outside, and the green glow from the slowly-dissipating Mark above the west wing. Eglantine and Cam walked upright through the ballroom, keeping to the perimeters of the room, and then through the completely darkened corridor that connected the ballroom to the foyer, and which opened onto several useless chambers that were relics of the home's aristocratic past. Before entering the foyer, which would be brighter than the west wing because of the room's glass dome, Cam performed a Shadow Charm on herself and Eglantine, so they could walk through the foyer undetected.

They heard voices, swelling in volume: one was their aunt Alya's; the other was one that sounded vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough to name. Cam and Eglantine stayed in the hall, pressing their ears up against the doors.

"I demand to know why the Dark Lord wanted my husband dead, Mulciber! Stop lying!"

"I don't _know_, Alya. I didn't hear of any plan to kill Crevan. I don't think he did it."

They heard a crash—Alya had thrown something at Mulciber. "Of course he did it, you imbecile! Why else would the Mark be here? One of you—one of _us_—killed him. I demand to know who and why!"

"For Merlin's sake, Alya, it's not as if you loved him," said another voice.

"That's Dolohov," Cam muttered to Eglantine. "I remember him better than you, from uncle's parties. He's one of the ones who killed Bertie."

"You remember Dolohov. And yet you still insist Crevan wasn't a Death Eater." Eglantine sighed.

Alya, out in the foyer, let out a loud sob. "So what?" she moaned. "He was useful to me; he was still useful to me—and what's more, to _him_. This is wrong, this is all wrong—"

There was a loud pop: someone had Apparated in.

"_You_—you horrid—why did you kill him, Tom, why? It didn't need to be done! The curse was working as it should've; he would've kept giving you information just as you wanted."

"I didn't," hissed a cold, high voice. "And don't accuse me of lying, Alya; you know I didn't do it."

Eglantine elbowed Cam sharp in the ribs, but neither of them dared to even whisper to each other: it was him. They were in the same building as Voldemort.

"What do you mean, 'I know'? You should know more than anybody that there is no such thing as knowing. If you didn't kill him, if you didn't order it done, why the Mark?"

"Somebody wished to mislead you. That is all."

"Nobody can conjure the Mark except us – it has to be one of us."

"I shall deal with the individual who has done this," said Voldemort. "They have acted without my orders and have associated me with the act. There are many people whose deaths I shall cause, but Crevan Bertrand's was not one I intended. He _was _still useful to me. However, now that you have lost, as it were, your right hand…I'm not so sure the same holds true for you."

"I—what? I—Tom, I still have _children_, they could—you know, for _years—_and I helped you with what you said was your most important—"

"Stop groveling, Alya. It doesn't become you. And, incidentally, don't ever presume to question me again. If I _had _taken your husband's life, it would have been the correct decision. Dolohov, please teach Mrs. Bertrand the consequences of her arrogance; then join me."

"Of course, my Lord," said Dolohov. Eglantine and Cam could hear a swishing sound, and the departure of Voldemort and Mulciber; then, they heard Dolohov bellow, _Crucio_! And they heard Alya screaming.

Without discussion, Eglantine and Cam went back the way they came, and—still silent—returned to the car. They sat in there, doors closed, windows fogging with their breath.

"Shit," said Eglantine.

"I suppose I just didn't want to admit it to myself," said Cam. "I just—I mean, he's our _uncle_. You don't want to think you're related to someone like that. Hell, you don't want to think the cousin you work with is related to that."

"_How_? It was sort of obvious. I mean, it's not really something you bring up casually round the dinner table, but it's not as if he kept the most lawful company—Dolohov, Mulciber's dad, that creepy Greyback bloke that came to the Christmas party that year—probably Evan Rosier's dad, he's kind of a toad."

"You know," Cam said, biting her lip, "I'd wondered about that myself. It isn't as if I was ignorant to the _possibility_. But then I thought, they're all supposed to be anonymous, aren't they? And there was no _way _anyone ever could've stayed anonymous if Crevan and Alya were involved. Crevan made a toast once that he had been friends with all of them—the old ones, I mean, like Nott and Thuban Avery and Dolohov—since Hogwarts, and that they talked all the time—they must at least know if _each other_ were…you know. "

"True." Eglantine turned the car on. Now the Beatles were playing. _But I don't care too much for money; money can't buy me love. _She loved this song: she'd danced to it with her aunt Linda, her brother Carlisle's wife, in their kitchen in Chicago; she had made Molly Weasley go with her to a Beatles concert once, and Molly had fainted during this song when she had supposedly touched Paul; it was the first song she played when she had finally succeeded in getting her record player to work. It was strange, hearing this song that was tied to so much happiness, and beginning to feel as if happiness couldn't even be real. As if nothing could be real.

She had never really likeduncle Crevan. He'd been blustery and empty-headed, weak and distant and judgmental. Several times, when Eglantine had misbehaved at a Christmas party or some other get-together, she'd heard Crevan giving her father a lecture about how Eglantine was arrogant because she was so much younger than the rest, and how her "inappropriate" interest in Muggles had to be put to bed. Crevan was the only uncle she had, and Alya the only aunt, and they were both utterly tiresome. And as bothersome as they were, as overbearing, as snobbish, as disapproving, Eglantine had always wanted to hope that her judgments about them had been wrong. She had been waiting to find the soft core that must be somewhere inside Alya; had been waiting for Crevan to come round, to approve of somebody, anybody. She'd wanted to find some shred of evidence that would prove to her for once and all that they were decidedly not Death Eaters or even bigots—that their acquaintance with a load of Lord Voldemort's toadies was just a sorry, stupid coincidence.

Tonight, though, she'd learned that her assumptions had been right; and there are some things a person doesn't wish to be right about, no matter how fervently they may argue their point, even with themselves. Her uncle's guilt was confirmed at the same time as his death. If the investigation proved thorough enough, the name she shared with him would be as tarnished as those of Nott and Dolohov. People might come after her or Cam or even Carlisle the way people came after Bertie, and she knew that none of them were as strategic as Bertie had been. They couldn't think ahead; they didn't share his force.

Cam didn't seem to be upset in the same way. She was talking now, talking about how they should tip somebody off about Alya. She was debating herself earnestly: she wanted to be right.

"Fuck it," she said, cutting Cam off. "Fuck everybody. Everyone but you and me and Carlisle and mum and dad. Everybody can see me in hell."

As the Aurors arrived at Crevan Bertrand's mansion to inspect the room in which he had been murdered, Eglantine and Camilla sped off to town, dodging cars, and—without noticing her sister leave—Eglantine danced all night, leaving with the numbers of seven men, all older, all differently rebellious-looking, all equally sleazy. Thanks to the fake ID she'd crafted last semester at school and the size of her chest underneath her purple tube top, they'd all thought she was eighteen, and had bought her drinks. The songs had all blended together under the lights to create a world in which there were no Death Eaters, no Bertrands, no Aurors, and all Eglantine had to worry about was not getting truly drunk and not tripping over someone's platform heels and ending up splayed across the floor. Nothing from the outside was real here.

When she left, she caught the Knight Bus, and there, in the stuffy, dusty-smelling interior of the bus, as it banged and rushed across England, she remembered. There she sat, once again silent, wondering who would be next.


	2. Chapter 2

two

A week later, Crevan Bertrand had been buried, unsupervised by his youngest niece. Cam went, she said, only because she found herself unable to concoct a way to explain it to her cousin Mel, who was also her supervisor in the Records Rooms of the Ministry of Magic. She hadn't liked Eglantine's suggestion that she tell Mel that it was none of her damn business.

While Crevan was being interred in the family plot, Eglantine was still asleep. She had drifted off on the downstairs couch of Lily Evans's parents' house, where they had been watching Monty Python on television. Lily was the only person she knew who wouldn't judge her for having a Death Eater for an uncle. Not that she hung around many people from Hogwarts to begin with—she didn't _want _to fit in with the swotty purebloods her uncle tried to push her towards, nor the pseudo-rebels who were really just prats—but of the few she tolerated, Lily was the least likely to condemn her simply because her uncle was a criminal. She would insult Crevan right along with her, despite his being dead, and she'd constantly one-up Eglantine's insults so they got more and more lascivious. But she never judged her.

Lily's sister Petunia did, however. When Eglantine woke up, she could hear Petunia complaining to Lily's parents in the kitchen; Lily was still fast asleep, but Eglantine could hear Petunia complaining about why Lily and Eglantine thought they were too good to sleep in beds, which seemed to Eglantine to be a bit like grasping at straws. They'd fallen asleep on a sofa watching television, not erected giant stone plinths in the backyard that were engraved to say, "WE ARE BETTER THAN PETUNIA EVANS." She wasn't sure why Petunia always had such a bad temper with her: she'd always made an effort to be friendly even though Lily herself was distant to her sister, and always invited her along to the movies or the disco, despite the fact that Petunia had never once said yes. (Even Lily never said yes to the disco.)

"Hey," Eglantine whispered to Lily, who had fallen asleep at the opposite end of the sofa, her bare, pink-toed feet wedged into Eglantine's armpit. "I'm going to head out. Everyone else is at my uncle's funeral. Not often I get the house to myself."

Lily's nose wrinkled. "Tell me about it," she mumbled. "Petunia _never leaves_."

Eglantine extracted her feet from where they had been shoved between the back of the couch and the cushion, and spider-crawled over Lily. "See you, you old snotbag. Too good for a bed!"

She could see Lily's parents surreptitiously watching her from the kitchen window, Petunia faintly visible and sour-faced behind them, as Eglantine mounted her broom in the back garden and flew off. She was almost certain that an old man cutting his grass had seen her, but his assertions that he'd seen a young lady with very permed brown-red hair and jean shorts get on a broom and fly off would likely be dismissed as whimsical senility. She thought that she probably should've used the bus again, but she was feeling disinclined to do anything that reminded her of that night.

Back at home, Eglantine landed in the carriage house area of her father Osbert's house, which was where her family tended to keep their brooms (her mother thought they were too dirty to come indoors), as well as their old flying carpet, which was now illegal. Inside there it was golden and smelled sweet, like hay, even though the old horse stalls had been empty for years before her father bought it with his share of the inheritance from Eglantine's grandparents, whom she had never met: they died before even Victor, the oldest of all the Bertrand children, had been born.

The house itself was boxy and blue, surrounded by a high wrought-iron fence and with another, much shorter, wrought iron trim atop the roof. It had been built in 1874 by a Muggle mill-owner—Eglantine liked to think of details like this; she felt it made the world more personal—and since he had always been too busy owning his mill and had never had children, the house had been left abandoned in 1915 during the war and had been empty until Eglantine's parents had purchased it. They'd almost completely restored it: the floors had their old Victorian sheen, the ormolu fireplaces glowed, the wallpaper (even the ugly bits) was vivid and bright, and the kitchen, crammed with cast-iron and brass, was a constant, warm clamor of elves and energy, baking bread and brewing a steady supply of tea. There was a kettle going when Eglantine walked in, head still pounding from a late bedtime and a late waking, and one of the house-elves was rolling out cookie dough across the scrubbed-wood table.

"Good morning, Miss. Would Miss like a cup of tea?"

"Sure. My parents didn't say when they'd be back, would they?"

"They said they'd be back at teatime, Miss."

Good. That left five full hours of solitude. She'd put away all the robes she'd left scattered around her room last night, have a bubble bath, and read up on her curses—and through it all, she could have her music on as loud as she pleased, with nobody to tell her to "turn those screaming Muggles down," as her mother frequently called up the stairs.

Her bedroom was in the back of the house, overlooking the courtyard and the garden, and the open windows let in a sweet honeysuckle scent. A crystal made wavering rainbows on the sage green walls, and the prisms were reflected again by the small silver mirror above the marble fireplace and by the mirror above her dresser. She took out her large red record player and put it on her desk—it was covered with books about jinxes, hexes, and curses, as well as several sheets of notes—and took out her favorite records. She'd start with ABBA: they were loud enough to drown out the noise of anxiety in her head, the idea that she was alone in the house and that Death Eaters had now killed two Bertrands—what was one more?

"_I love you, I do I do I do," _she bellowed, folding her robes to put into her dresser.

A dark-haired figure appeared in the mirror behind her. "So do I," it said.

Without thinking—without even imagining any dire consequences—Eglantine spun around and Stunned him. The room flooded with red light; the dark-haired figure flew backwards onto her fluffy, white-counterpaned bed, revealing dusty pants.

She stood there gaping at the person—the sixteen-year-old, male person—until she heard the fluttering of an owl at the window (warning her that if she continued upon her dangerous path of using magic, she would be expelled from the school that had taught her half the magic she knew in the first place). Then she un-Stunned him—second warning—and he slowly sat up, groaning and rubbing his temples.

"Awfully quick on the draw, aren't you, Eggs? I think you're in trouble, you know." He gestured at the owls and picked up one of the letters. "This Fudge fellow is a bit jumpy, isn't he? Sort of rapid himself. Maybe the two of you should form a partnership."

"What. The. _Fuck. _Are you doing. In my house?"

"You know, I seemed to recall an invitation you gave me before we left school; something to the effect of, 'Come see a movie with me sometime.' Well, here I am. Let's see a movie."

"Fuck _off_! Get out of my damn house, you lunatic!" She waved at him, shooing. Not only could she not remember inviting Sirius Black to a movie, she _really _couldn't remember inviting him into her bedroom.

He held up his hands in surrender. "All right. You really want to know why I'm here? I ran away from home and the Potters are on vacation in Crete, and Remus is ill, and Peter is boring. So you, Eglantine, as one of my oldest though most female friends, win two fabulous weeks of me sleeping in your closet and doing whatever you want me to do so long as I haven't got to go live in the woods." He flipped his hair. "And I'll have you know, there are plenty of girls who would _kill _to have me sleeping half that close to them."

"Well, I wouldn't," said Eglantine. Though she had to admit, if it hadn't been for his personality, and the fact that she'd known him since they were both eight years old and both extremely goofy-looking, and she was somewhere dark and full of music, she _might _have gone for it. "Why'd you run away from home?"

"Just couldn't take it anymore." He laid across her bed in a mock-seductive pose. "The shouting. The fighting. The shouting. The '_Regulus _never does that.' Have I mentioned the shouting? It just got incredibly old."

"Didn't know your mum was that bad," Eglantine said, sitting on the foot of the bed. "Still, must beat having a Death Eater uncle."

It had slipped out—here in her bedroom, the fact seemed odd but part of life, part of _her_, and she hadn't thought to conceal it as she would have elsewhere—before she could consider the prudence of telling Sirius Black that she was related to a Death Eater, and probably a murderer. Not that she _cared _what he thought, not that much, but he was still one of her oldest friends. And his parents…she wasn't entirely sure about his parents. If he ever changed his mind, well, she was sure they'd been friends with Crevan and Alya for the same reason as Dolohov. They certainly hated Muggles enough.

"Oh, so that's why they offed him?" he said, his expression only mildly curious. "I read about that in the _Prophet_, and I would've written a letter of sympathy only I knew that I didn't need to have sympathy, that nobody much liked him anyway except your cousin Victor and maybe your dad. For what it's worth, I don't think he was as evil as most of them. Always seemed a bit of an idiot to me—no offense."

"No, he was. I just…it's depressing, you know? How your own relatives can turn out to be such…such _scum_. I mean, half the people he invited to those things were probably Death Eaters. Not the Prewetts, obviously. Or any of us—my dad, Mum, Bertie, Carlisle, Cam. Or you. And nobody ever thought…"

"And we never saw just how bad they were? Yeah, I think of that too sometimes. Some of them were _definitely _Death Eaters, which should make for some awkward moments if either of us become Aurors. But we can always think of it as strategic advantage, eh? We know their weaknesses. Like Yaxley and his phobia of wet pants—I still remember that time you accidentally sloshed that entire glass of eggnog across his trousers and he ran off screaming. That was classic."

"What do you mean 'accidentally'? He was a creep. He was always looking down Mel's shirt."

Sirius frowned. "You know, my parents would probably be proud of me if I became one of them. They won't do it themselves—they're too _fancy _for it; too high on their own horses to stand up for their loathsome little beliefs, and I wish they would, because then I could see her put in jail—but I think they'd be proud if I did. They'll push Reg into it, though. He's weak."

Eglantine had never been close with Sirius's younger brother Regulus, a nervous, pretty-faced boy who'd always reminded her of an anxious hare. The chief thing she always remembered about Reg was that they locked him in a closet at Crevan's and forgot about him until Sirius's parents, tipsy on wassail, left without both their children and had to come back. And also the time they duped Reg into eating a whole pound of Bertie Bott's Beans.

"Yeah, he'll go for it," she said. "And he'll get captured first thing, probably, because he'll drop his wand in terror."

She was smiling until she felt the hand on her shoulder. "Uh-uh. No touching. That's the number one rule of sleeping in my closet."

"I don't like that one. Are there others?"

"No complaining about the lack of touching. No mentioning touching. And no complaining about my musical choices."

"Is that what that is? _Music_? I thought it was a bloke getting burned to death."

"He's _singing_. He happens to have the broadest range of any major rock singer."

"How lovely for him. And this is what he does with it?"

"_You do not insult Queen. _If you insult Queen, I _call _the Death Eaters."

"Wow. All right. Shutting up about Queen. Hey, d' you people have any oatmeal? I'm starving."

So began the two weeks that Sirius spent in Eglantine's closet. She made him a rather comfortable bed out of spare quilts, and slapped him when he (jokingly, he said afterward) tried to pull her down onto it. For several days, they encountered one another only in the mornings and evenings, when she would get changed, much to his chagrin, behind a large screen. There was always music. He found that he liked the Rolling Stones (especially "Paint it Black," because he was an unabashed narcissist), but not the Beatles—they were too hokey. He liked The Who, but not, obviously, Queen—too dramatic. He absolutely reviled Elvis Presley.

It was the first time that Eglantine had spent such a large quantity of time with a boy who wasn't one of her brothers, or Lily's odd, rather creepy friend (former friend, really) Severus. She couldn't entirely decide whether she liked it or not. On one hand, it was pleasant to have somebody to tell about her day who wasn't Cam, or her mother, or her father. And she'd always liked Sirius—he was _almost _like a brother, because she'd known him for so long, but he wasn't anywhere near as wet and brainless as either Carlisle or Bertie. She had loved Bertie, but even Cam had thought he was a tiny bit of a stick in the mud. As children, she and Sirius always been one another's companions at Christmastime, usually with Reg and sometimes with Cam and Belinda, who would usually drift off after about fifteen minutes to go flirt with the Prewett twins. Those had been the best Christmases that Eglantine could remember: the ones spent solely with Crevan, Alya, and her cousins had been dull, since she was at least five years younger than everyone else, and usually somewhat forgotten; and then, after Crevan stopped having parties altogether, that had been the least exciting of all. It had just been Osbert, Ethelinda, Bertie and whatever girlfriend he was hanging out with at the time (usually Marlene) and sometimes Arthur Weasley, who'd come by to eat and try to sneak into Eglantine's room to fiddle with her record player; Carlisle, who lived and breathed Quidditch and stayed indoors for five minutes before going out to have a match with Victor and Mel and the Prewetts in Crevan's fields; and Cam, who'd usually tag along with Carlisle so she could still encounter the Prewetts. Even after Carlisle moved, and they started going to America, she'd still rather have been at Crevan's, snooping through the house with Sirius and Reg, dropping Dungbombs on the friends of her uncle's whom they least liked, and flying her grandfather's old brooms down the upstairs hallways.

On the other hand, he farted in his sleep. She could hear it through the door. He would come out of the closet, grimacing and holding his ears, whenever she played "Hound Dog," and he wouldn't tell her why he had laughed so hard the first time she played it. He wasn't nearly as enjoyable as he used to be, and he was moody, and if he wasn't moping in the closet and obviously wishing she would talk to him about it, he was _prying. _He asked her constant, badgering questions about what she was doing, and what song was that, and where was she going, and what was that movie about, and what was a _disco_.

"_You've _never been to a disco?" she asked him incredulously that first Friday night, putting her hoop earrings in and smearing glitter across her eyelids. She was going to go alone: Cam was having dinner with Mel and some blonde chap from the Ministry that Mel was trying to set her up with. (Eglantine had to throw her Alice band out the window to convince her not to wear it to the dinner.)

"No. Should I have?"

"Um, yes. Get dressed. Or—er—clean yourself, or something. You're coming. Wow—I know it's a Muggle thing, but I thought you'd at least have gone a few times to meet girls."

He grinned. Cam would have said that his wicked grin looked a lot like hers, but Cam always missed the important things, like the fact that she was always proposing something enjoyable and he was usually about to be an annoyance.

"I have something we can go on."

"I am not falling for another of your stupid double entendre puns."

"You will, but this isn't one of them. Didn't you wonder how I got here?"

"I _asked _you how you got here. You wouldn't tell me."

"That's because I was saving the surprise until later. Until now, in fact. I hid it in the hayloft of that carriage house."

"You hid _what _in the hayloft of the carriage house?"

"Our means of transportation."

"Ooh, so you've got a broom." She took out her lipgloss and smeared it on. "I already knew that."

"It's _not _a broom. It's much cooler than a broom."

"Sorry, you can't be cool. You don't know what cool is. People who hate Queen are not allowed to be cool."

He tossed his hands up in aggravation. "Enough with Queen! I just don't like them! Accept it!"

"Don't be getting all shouty like your mother. Come on, show me this 'means of transportation.' Will Lily fit on it? I was going to make her come with us. Or try, anyway—she never does."

"If she never does, there's no sense asking her, is there?"

"She'll cave someday."

"Why are you putting on so much makeup? It looks weird."

She threw her blusher brush at him. "Shut up! How should you know what 'looks weird' at discos? You've never been!" She reached for her can of hairspray and fluffed it up until it was roughly the size of a boxwood. "You'll look weird, dressed like a hobo."

"Oh, well, sorry, I happen not to have brought an entire disco wardrobe with me when I escaped Grimmauld Place. Next time I'll pack my silver lame bell bottoms."

"Oh, so you _do _know about discos."

"No, I was reading some of your magazines the other day in the closet when I was bored. I now know what to do if I am ever ensnared into a relationship with an older man, and also how to perfectly apply mascara without it becoming clumpy." He picked up a couple of Eglantine's smaller outfits and looked at them, confused. "You people are fascinating, really—you women. I mean, what _is _this?" He pulled on it. "It's like some sort of sling for people with broken limbs. And those shoes are insane. How does a person walk on them?"

"Attractively." Eglantine fluffed her hair again. "Let's go. And we're getting Lily, whether you want to or not."

"I don't know if we _can. _Let me show you."

"Fine. You sneak out this way through the window, and I'll go out through the kitchens—I usually go out through the servants' stairs so Mum can't see what I'm wearing. Meet you in the carriage house."

He was still navigating his way down the ivy as Eglantine walked across the darkened courtyard to the carriage house and lit the lamps. She polished her broom quickly as she waited—she wasn't entirely certain that she trusted Sirius's "method of transportation."

Eventually he emerged, sweating, through the carriage house door. "I was _not _properly warned about that ivy."

"I thought you were coordinated."

"You want to find out just how coordinated?"

Eglantine rolled her eyes. "No! The answer will always be no! Come on, let's get whatever this _thing _is on the road to Lily's."

"Boring old Lily," he muttered, opening the creaky, uneven back door to the upstairs hayloft of the carriage house. "She'll ruin the fun."

"No offense, but if anybody's going to ruin anyone's fun, it's going to be you."

"What do you mean? I'm a barrel of laughs. I am mischievous, witty, _and_ handsome."

"You moped in the closet all day during the week. You were _so _intent on sitting in that closet that you read my magazines. And you complained about nearly everything."

He looked back at her, frowning in concern. "Where's this coming from? You never mentioned that you thought that."

"Well, no. Why would I?"

"A more apt question might be, why would you wait until now to mention it?"

She shrugged. "Because. I don't know; I just don't want you getting all…weird. Promise me you won't get weird?"

"I dunno what you mean by 'weird,' but I'll try."

She didn't want to tell him what she meant by _weird_, because she wasn't completely sure herself. Weird, she meant, as in the feeling she got when he was talking about his family's anti-Muggle prejudices and how they tried to inflict that on him, of being intensely disinterested and simultaneously fascinated. Weird, as in the way he looked at her as if he were actually drinking in the fact that she was listening to him. Weird, as in the dark expression that had appeared on his face when he'd emerged from the closet after Camilla had left the room, because she and Eglantine had been talking about Eglantine's latest disco conquest. Weird, as in the fact that she'd never felt this close to anybody but Cam, not even Lily, and the fact that she really wasn't comfortable with it and couldn't wait for Sirius to leave, but at the same time, would feel alone if he did. Even after such a short time, it was like all the times they'd seen one another before culminated in some sort of prerequisite to this instant familiarity. It was like those instant meals that Muggles were so fond of: it's not much until you apply just a little bit of heat, and then hey presto, ravioli.

The hayloft was dark, stuffy, musty, and entirely devoid of hay: it was a plain, low, sloped room with rough floors and a large door opening over the carriage yard, and another trap door towards the back for the hay to be dropped down to the ex-horses.

Sirius knew exactly where the lantern was and lit it from a match container beside it. "I've come up here a few times during the day—still dark in here, but it was light enough for me to figure out where the lanterns were." He motioned to Eglantine. "It's over here."

_It _was a large black shape covered by a tarpaulin. He pulled it off. Underneath was a motorbike.

"Why do you have that up here? How did it _get _up here?"

"It flies." Sirius grinned. "If we want it to. I rather fancy driving on the road, myself."

"I've never driven one of those."

"Well, I'll be driving it."

"Fine. Then I'll drive my car."

He laughed; it was a loud, short laugh, like a bark. "_You _have a car? Where?"

"In an abandoned barn that uncle Crevan forgot was on his land."

"Excellent. Does it fly?"

"No. It can be invisible, though. Cam enchanted it for me so Crevan wouldn't ever see it."

"Camilla Bertrand enchanted an illegal vehicle? I'm impressed at that. I didn't think your sister sneezed without a permit."

"You don't know Cam like I do. She's not the goody-two-shoes everybody thinks. She _almost _kissed a guy at a disco…once." She was staring at the motorbike. It _was _intriguing. She had a vision of herself in a black leather outfit like something out of some American karate movie, hair streaming behind her in the wind, black goggles on—maybe not the goggles—roaring through the streets. And all the men would be so _jealous _of Sirius, and they'd pay even more attention to her…

"On second thought," she said, "Lily's probably busy. I forgot, she did mention some sort of family thing this week."

Sirius grinned. "I knew you couldn't resist the primal urges excited by the motorbike."

"Merlin's toes, stop assuming that I think you—or anything about you—is sexy! Just _stop_!" She swung a leg over the back seat of the bike. It wasn't the most comfortable thing in existence, and in fact was rather likely to chafe, but she was sure it looked appealing.

"But everybody thinks I'm sexy."

"Exactly. That's all I need—for everybody else to think you're sexy. Mission accomplished. Now would you start this thing? I want to make an entrance."

"Why does everyone else need to think I'm sexy?"

"Just shut up and take me to the disco, would you?"

"Fine." He took a helmet out of a pile of broken wood and leaves, brushing it off. "Just remember that I've got feelings, you know."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, you _feel _like you're the universe's sexiest man. And I, in turn, _feel _like you're just another sixteen-year-old boy who will soon learn that he _looks _like a sixteen-year-old boy, spots and all."

The engine roared into life. She could only faintly hear him say, "I don't _have _spots," before they flew out of the barn and up above the house.


	3. Chapter 3

three

Funkytown Disco was in a nondescript cinderblock building that had been painted, as Sirius's song went, black. There was an enormous flashing sign with _Funkytown _in blinking green script, with a blue border of revolving light that stood out hazy and bleary against the clear outline of the full moon. The line out front was enormous; Sirius pulled in up front between another motorbike and a stout red Beetle. The crowd hummed with conversation. A thousand different perfumes filled the air, the scents' owners smoking leaned up against the wall. Eglantine smiled at the bouncer.

"Cecil! How are you?"

"Same." Cecil, a frowning man built like an obese bulldog, managed a smirk. "Who's this one?"

"School chum. Don't worry, I still have room in my heart for you, darling."

"Yes, but the question is, is there room in the club?"

"Of course there is. There's always room for me. And Sirius."

"Sirius, eh? Cool name," Cecil remarked to Sirius, who was striding up with his helmet under his arm. "Weird name, but cool."

"Thanks," said Sirius, looking dubious.

"Head on in, Sheryl. Usual table's ready."

Sirius hurried behind her as the door opened just wide enough to admit them, single-file. Inside it was pitch-black except for the shimmer of the disco ball, and could've been silent but for the shrillness of the music.

"What the fuck was that all about? The _usual_? What are you, famous?" roared Sirius the second they were at the table, which was slightly removed from the noise.

"No. Just very popular."

"_Have you slept with the bodyguard?"_

"Cecil? No. I think he's gay, actually. He just likes me."

"He likes _Sheryl_."

"Oh, come _on. _Nobody in the entire fucking world is named Eglantine except me. I had to create a persona."

"Why? What's wrong with you as you are?"

She shrugged. "Oh, nothing, except for the whole 'magic' bit. Makes it kind of hard to blend in. I'm going to dance. Band should be playing in an hour."

Sure enough, Tyler from another band was on her in five minutes, almost right after she began dancing to the Bee Gees. He was tall, shaggy-haired, watery-eyed. Not attractive, but talented. He wore long bell-bottoms and smelled, like the walking cliché he tried so desperately to be, like patchouli.

"Who's the young lad?" shouted Tyler over the music. "Brother?"

"Friend! He's very sheltered! Never been to a disco before!"

"Has he found shelter with you?"

"Gross, no!"

"Good."

Tyler hadn't the faintest idea that she was sixteen, or that she found him entirely unappetizing and only hung with him because of his voice and acoustic guitar. She didn't even likeTyler's personality. He was shady and a male whore. He slept with women and never called them. They didn't even mind. It was all too pathetic.

She danced with Tyler, then with Sam, who was closer to her age—he claimed to Cecil and to her that he was nineteen, but she thought he must be at least as young as she was, if not younger. Sam was ever so slightly punk, which she had found inexplicably made her heart beat faster. It was all the black, she thought. It was mysterious. Pleasantly intimidating. She wondered if she'd still think Sam were attractive in normal clothes. Probably not, although it wasn't just the black, since everyone at Hogwarts wore it—Severus, for example—and they were most certainly _not _all attractive.

Sam was yelled at by his girlfriend, and so was Eglantine, and Eglantine slapped her off of her. Sirius tried to pull her out of the fight, but she was _winning_; but by the time he had, the girl was gone.

"Now I understand why Lily doesn't want to go to discos with you," he said, his lips pursed. He looked remarkably like his father when he was forcing himself not to yell at Walburga.

"Well, obviously it wouldn't be like this if Lily were here. We'd be having fun, dancing with boys _together_, and one lone stupid woman wouldn't bother attacking two girls at once. Men would be all _over _her."

"Is that what you want?" he asked incredulously.

"Oh, that coming from Mr. Sexy! It's all right for you to want every girl to fawn admiringly at your feet, but girls aren't supposed to like being admired by men—oh, no. How old _are _you, Sirius Black?"

"It's not that." He was pouting grumpily. Eglantine could sense an attack of weird coming on. Weird, fun-killing behavior.

"Whatever it is, it's obnoxious. If you don't like it, you can leave! I've gone home alone before."

"Not while I'm here, you're not."

"Suit yourself."

She didn't even know what he was doing most of the night—as she danced again with Sam, she caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, being forcefully snogged by a girl called Tamara who had once offered Eglantine some strange drug in the women's loo. In that moment, in the back of her mind, she hoped that he wouldn't do anything so stupid as that—she realized she'd forgotten to give him an informative talk on Muggle intoxicants, like some overserious parent in a film—but the moment was soon overridden by a new song, a new dancing partner. After dancing with a few more people, some men, some women, some in group dances, she found herself in a corner with Sam.

He kissed her gently at first, his wide nose brushing her cheek. He was tall, with hard, bony shoulders—those, she already knew about from dancing—but she had never noticed before that he smelled of onions beneath his Drakkar Noir. Probably something his mother cooked for him. She probably thought he was out at the cinema with some dorky, made-up mate. Or maybe she didn't care what he did. Fine hairs on his neck changed color as the disco ball spun.

Then he was kissing her. His lips were forceful, graceless, dry. His teeth hit hers; he didn't seem to notice. His tongue was as long and exploratory as a bivalve's neck, flailing without destination in her mouth, stickily colliding with the roof of her mouth, her molars, her own tongue.

It was not a good kiss, as kisses went. In fact, it was revolting. But she kept kissing him, because through her eyelashes she could see, across the room, Sirius's angry expression. It amused her. Why shouldn't she kiss Sam? He was such a hypocrite—for all his "I'm not my parents" bluster, he _was _Orion and Walburga Black, incorrigibly pissed because one of his friends dared to snog a Muggle in public.

She didn't entirely think it was that. But that had to be an element in it. After all, she'd kissed what's-his-face on a dare, right in front of the entire Herbology class before the professor arrived. He hadn't even _noticed _that. Was it because of Sam's red hair? His outfit? His general mien of ambivalence? He didn't even _know _Sam. And she had already told Sirius that she wasn't interested in him except in a friendly capacity: any _jealousy_, or anything along those lines, was entirely off the table.

"Mm. Brilliant," said Sam. His voice cracked on the "brill." She could feel an uninvited stiffness beneath the Lurex of his trousers: time to go.

"I've had better," she said. "Excuse me."

She slipped beneath his arm before he could retain her to whine or cajole, and she strode across the dance floor, dodging the manic flailings of a drunken middle-aged couple who were trying to meld disco and the foxtrot. She supposed that Cecil had let them in for the amusement of all present, but they were something of a hazard.

"It's getting late!" she shouted at Sirius. "Let's go!"

At the mention of the word _go_, Tamara detached herself from the embrace of a bleach-blonde man in a pink motorcycle jacket and tossed herself towards Sirius onto the back of his neck, embracing him as if she were some sort of hog wrestler from Arkansas.

"Don't _gooooo_," she drawled. She'd obviously partaken of her own product. "Stay with me. It's much more _fun _here. Sheryl's no _fun_."

"Actually, I think Sheryl's a little too fun," Sirius said drily. "She's right. We're going."

Out on the sidewalk, Sirius unblocked his motorbike: somebody had double-parked, wedging it in. Cecil helped him maneuver it onto the sidewalk and around the crowd that still thronged around the door. Sirius asked, in an imperious and peevish voice that truly _was _Orion's, how to get out of the neighborhood, and they both mounted the bike. She didn't mention Sam—she was waiting to see how he'd handle it, if he'd have the arrogance to think she'd care what he thought. As soon as they were out of view, he took off into the sky, silently taking her directions based on landmarks below.

She liked him quiet. It was company, but without all that pesky obligation.

Back in the erstwhile hayloft, he flung his helmet into a corner, brow furrowed, lower lip out. He looked, to her, like a hairy baby denied a sweetie. He made it rather easy to laugh at him.

_Not like Remus at all_, she thought. Thinking this made her feel nauseated, ashamed. She had managed to successfully avoid thinking of him once this summer, even though in the back of her mind she acknowledged that he was the entire _reason _that she tolerated Sirius to begin with. Crevan's murder had driven him mostly out of her mind, and she had even kept herself from indulging in ludicrous daydreams about asking him to protect her, mainly because he had made it clear that he wouldn't be pleased by any such request. _You're better off without someone like me_, he'd said. What a fucking _stupid _thing to say, she'd wanted to tell him. Instead she had just said something like, "Well, you're probably right," which she'd hoped would sound sarcastic but which instead mainly sounded passive and wilting-flowery. She had pondered obsessively for weeks about how to prove to him that she was not better off without him; that he was the most perfect human being on the planet. No foolproof plan, no genius idea, had ever materialized, and she had resigned herself to a very halfhearted summer spent flirting with idiots at discos and hanging around her sister.

She was actually angry at Sirius in that moment for not being him, for not being her ideal, that one person who didn't seem to vex or tire her, the one who slowed down time from its usual squealing plummet down to something normal, something manageable. He was ordinary. He was amazingly bloody _irritating._

"Exactly what is your problem?" she snapped. She wanted a fight. She wanted a scene. She even hoped perhaps one of her parents would hear and send Sirius forcibly packing back to Grimmauld Place.

"Isn't it obvious?"

She grinned. "No. Enlighten me."

"Um, well, might it _possibly _be the fact that you asked me to come with you to this disco, and then you completely ignore me, and then you're snogging some grungy Muggle—"

"I _knew _it! I _knew_ that was it!" she said triumphantly.

"I'm not finished! No, it _wasn't _because he was a Muggle, it was because he was _vile_. When you were dancing with that group, all those glittery girls, he was smarming up to some black-haired girl in the same corner, obviously trying to put the moves on her, and you just—you just _encouraged _him to be like that—"

She snorted. "Shows how much you know. I told him the kiss was crap, because it was. I thought, what would I get out of saying no? I was curious about kissing him—I liked him. Turns out he smells like onions." She shrugged. "They can't _all _be good."

"All?" he asked incredulously. "You know how many girls I've kissed? Two. And you think I'm this womanizing Casanova."

"You _wish _you were. That's not up for debate. I never said you actually _were _one, if you look back on it."

For a second she wondered who the girls were, and if they'd been prettier than she was. Then she reminded herself that it didn't matter—this was _Sirius _she was talking to.

"Well, whatever, you make it out like I've got this slimy reputation sometimes. I haven't. But _this _guy—"

"Why's he worse than I am? Sam, I can guarantee you, is not nearly as well-liked as I am. Why're you not criticizing me for being, as you put it, 'vile'?"

"Because you're not. Vile. There's nothing _vile _about you." He swallowed. Suddenly he seemed not as angry anymore. "At all."

"Oh, no. You're angry with me, remember? Stay angry, why don't you? Or I'll make you angrier."

"How?"

She didn't like the way he was looking at her. She had limited options: hurl herself out of the hayloft, or, as she'd said, resurrect the brief flame of ire he'd had.

"The reason I don't like you is that I like Remus."

_Is that actually going to make him angry_? He only looked mildly surprised, then blasé.

"I kind of figured that you liked him. But I thought—I don't know. That you might also have come to like me. You know…" He gestured awkwardly at the house. "Seeing me all the time. Things like that. I guess…" He ran his fingers through his hair. "I guess not. Forget it. Kiss Mr. Glass Onion all you want."

She wanted to ask him, really ask him and make him be honest, why he wasn't angry anymore. It was as if a switch had flipped from a conversation she could handle—a conversation she could _win—_to something where she didn't understand the tactics, to something she couldn't win. She wasn't sure she could even recognize what victory would look like.

"Well, as it happens, I don't want to," she said.

"No? Why not?"

"I already told you. Because it sucked—literally. It was gross. I'd rather kiss anybody _but _Sam."

"All right." He shrugged. Before she knew what he was doing, he was kissing her.

Not just kissing her. Most boys she'd kissed had either been strategically pawing at her, with an aim to brush boob or butt or something else, or allowing their arms to hang stupidly at their sides. He touched her face, smoothed her hair back.

At first she let him kiss her because she was too surprised to push him back. And then she allowed it because it was the best-quality kiss she'd had in quite some time.

"Now, _that _was good," she said when their lips broke apart. "You should give lessons."

He smiled. "Thanks. So my lack of practice isn't exactly a handicap?"

"No. You're a natural. Perfect technique. Not a bit like kissing the wrong end of an octopus."

"An _octopus_?"

"Yes. Some blokes, they just suck you in too much, and then they thrash about in there like an octopus."

"Blecch. Please tell me you haven't kissed anyone that bad."

"Oh, yes. First time I went to a disco, in fact. Last year. Seventeen-year-old chap named Ronnie. Eurgh, I thought I'd never kiss anyone again."

"Bit unnerving, knowing that something as foul as Ronnie's tongue has been in your mouth. Especially since it doesn't seem a bit damaged by it."

"What can I say? I'm resilient."

She shuffled her gigantic shoes back and forth. This wasn't customary, the awkward silence. She couldn't believe she'd kissed Sirius. Part of her was surprised that he hadn't been her _first _kiss, two children wondering what it felt like, but that made it even weirder, in a sense. This was unprecedented. She'd never kissed a friend, just strangers, and family on the cheeks. She didn't know what to do afterward: with strangers, if one didn't want to kiss them again—and she didn't, though not for the same reasons she'd never wanted to kiss Ronnie again—one simply said "goodbye" and sauntered off. If one did, by some happy accident, even wish to be in the same room as them again, one left a number or proposed a meeting place and invited further contact.

Instead, Sirius was coming back into her room with her, whether she wanted him there or not, and he was going to be sleeping in her closet. Did he expect her to talk to him? Could she just go about her business and then go to sleep without having to address it again? Was it too much to hope that he'd forget about it entirely?

The situation annoyed her. She felt like sending him a clear message: ignoring him for the rest of his stay and writing a lot of love letters to people, for instance, and giggling about various moronic disco boys.

"We should probably go inside," she said. "It's late. You climb up the ivy. I'll open the window for you."

"So…"

"So what?"

He sighed. "Nothing. Nothing. Yes, open the window for me."

If it hadn't been for the shoes, she'd have been running inside, running up to her bedroom, shoving the window open. She had too much time to think, and as she crept up to her bedroom, she considered what a colossal mistake this was.

He would tell Remus. Especially since she'd stupidly told him that she _liked _Remus. Couldn't keep her mouth shut, like a child. And Remus wouldn't take her seriously after that: who would? She'd said she wanted Remus, and then she turned around and snogged his best friend. It's not like the circumstances—the fact that Sirius had moved in for it and not her, and that kisses didn't _mean _anything to her—would matter. It would just seem wrong.

And he would tell _everybody_. Kissing Sirius Black would follow her through adulthood, probably to her grave. Nobody would _get _that just because everybody else found him attractive, that didn't mean she did. Men would avoid her, thinking that they could never compare to Sirius. Women would be jealous. (Of _what_, exactly? She felt like telling someone about the farting, just so it was out there on public record.)

He was waiting, clinging to the vines. She thought of Romeo and Juliet. Hopefully nobody would expect them to fall in love and kill themselves, because she for one was not planning on taking any poison.

"You're really not going to talk about it at all?" he said. He was frowning. It was maddening—why'd he have to be so dramatic? Why did he have to make a _thing _about this?

"Talk about what?"

He slumped into the closet. "Stop being such a drama queen," she said to the door as it creaked shut. "It's unbecoming."


	4. Chapter 4

four

In the morning, he was gone. She was used to waking up to the faint odor of soap that meant that Sirius had woken up and opened the closet a crack. Sometimes, if the coast was especially clear, he'd shower in the wee hours of the morning. She was used to smuggling him breakfast. She could still smell the soap, but the bedding in the closet was rolled up, and the room was empty.

She went down to eat breakfast and tried not to let it bother her. He hadn't left a note or anything. Had he really been that bothered by her reaction to the kiss? If so, what exactly was he going to tell people? Where had he gone?

Was he angry? She didn't want to entertain the possibility—she didn't want to care about the possibility—but what if he was? She wasn't sure what it meant to her, for him to be angry. Should she care? Try to fix it? _Did _she care?

She decided that he must have left a note, but that she just hadn't seen it. After breakfast she returned to her bedroom, rifling through the notes on her desk, a pile of papers on her dresser, her shoes. Would he have tried to hide it somewhere clever? She did a walkthrough of the house, wondering if maybe an owl had dropped one off unbeknownst to her. But there was nothing—in the whole house, nothing.

Back to the desk she went.

_You're WELCOME, Sirius_, she wrote, underlining and re-tracing "welcome."

_You're welcome for letting you sleep on my closet, and eat our food. You're welcome for listening to you mope and carry on about everything. You're really selfish, you know that? You think everyone's just going to fall at your feet. You're kind of ridiculous._

_ And you better not be mad about the kiss. Not everybody is practically celibate and has only kissed two people. I've kissed a lot more than that and I've realized that a kiss is meaningless. It's just a handshake you do with your face, with people who you maybe like a little more than those you shake hands with, but it's not really _personal_. Don't forget, you kissed me, so I don't HAVE to like it._

_ Even though you are pretty good at it. But that's not the problem. _

She made a small grunt of frustration and crumpled the note into a ball. You weren't supposed to admit in angry notes that people were good kissers. It didn't strengthen her case; it was irrelevant information. She was _known _for including irrelevant information, because to her, everything was relevant. The only one who didn't care about her verbosity was Professor Slughorn, because he was worse.

And "a handshake you do with your face"? What was _that_? Stupid similes also did not belong in angry letters. Maybe she just shouldn't send one. But it had to be _addressed_, somehow, the fact that he had just vanished.

Where did he even go? The Potters weren't due back until Wednesday. It was only Sunday. Was he living in the barn?

She hadn't checked the barn, she realized. She put her shoes on and went out, not finding him in the ground floor with the stables.

He was sitting, pathetically, on an old milking stool in the corner.

"Where's your dunce cap?"

"Huh?" She forgot—not everybody had acquired the same level of Muggle culture knowledge.

"Dunce cap. Sitting in the corner, on a stool…big pointy hat…never mind. What're you doing out here? I thought you'd gone."

"Unfortunately for you, I don't have anywhere else to go. I thought I'd get out of your way. Didn't expect you to come looking for me."

"Well, you just _left_. No note, no warning, nothing. I didn't know if maybe the Potters were back early, or if you'd gone to Remus's…or even Peter's…"

"I've never been desperate enough to visit Peter. No—I haven't even talked to him. I haven't told Remus, though I've talked to him. He'd just be concerned. My uncle Alphard knows. Gave me some gold. Said my parents went off on him afterward, but he'd never much liked them anyway. Seems to be a theme with us supposed purebloods—sibling loathing."

"Not me and Cam and Carlisle. Carlisle is too indifferent towards us to loathe us. Everybody liked Bertie, boring though he was. With us, I suppose it's been cousin loathing."

"I thought you all liked each other."

"Correction: _They _all like each other. I'm the wrench in the machine. Victor hates me, Mel and I don't like each other because we're similar in the wrong ways, and Belinda…you know Belinda."

"I don't know Belinda the way most men know Belinda."

"Of course not. You're too young and not rich enough."

"I'd be scared to get involved with her, anyway. You Bertrand women are heartless and evil."

"Ha, ha. Black women are worse."

"Just Bellatrix, really. Narcissa's just stupid. She'd follow Lucius Malfoy into a burning building if he told her they could shag afterward. You'd think with a name like Narcissa she'd be a bit more interested in self-preservation."

"And your mum."

Sirius rolled his eyes, stretching his legs out – the milking stool can't have been comfortable. "And my mum. You know, I really envy people who like their mothers. Their lives must be so much smoother. When you say you hate your mum, the usual reaction is either shock and horror, or disbelief – 'Oh, you're sixteen, you'll get over it.' To which I reply, they don't know Walburga Black. You simply can't stop yourself hating her. It feels too right."

A sudden, reassuring thought occurred to Eglantine. "_That's _why!" she said. "You know, I really did wonder why you came here, and most of all why you kissed me, but now I know. Because your mother hates me."

"Not nearly as much as she hates me. She just thinks you're noisy and unladylike. She doesn't even _know _about the car. But no, that's not why."

"Well, apart from James being in Crete, and Remus being sick, and Peter being Peter."

"I don't even know if that's entirely why. I mean, I _could _have still gone to Remus's. The Potters probably wouldn't have minded if I stayed alone in their house. And not to be cocky, but there _are _a host of girls who would have clobbered their own mums to help me. But I didn't do any of that. Didn't simply tough out the week alone. Didn't take up Uncle Alphard's offer to stay. Even Andromeda, she's got a flat in Lincoln so she can keep seeing that Tonks bloke without anyone knowing. Could've stayed with her. I came here."

Eglantine didn't venture to ask why. She didn't want him to provide an answer that would make her feel obligated.

"Those times I got dragged to your swotty uncle's house were some of the best times I had, before Hogwarts. They left me alone. Didn't talk to me. Just let me run off and do what I pleased. And not only are you fun—too much fun, I guess, especially when you turn into Sheryl—you are, underneath it all, passably nice."

"Oh, well, _there's _a compliment."

"I meant it as one. You can't pretend you don't _act _nice. I meant that underneath all the acting, you actually are. Maybe you won't be winning any humanitarian awards, but you're a decent person."

"I'm not a humanitarian. I don't eat—"

"People, I know. God, that's an old joke." He laughed anyway. "I always admired your family. Not the Crevan-and-Alya side, they're just shady idiots, but your dad and mum. Your dad is a lot cooler than he looks, and your mum—your mum's great. She always used to ask me how things were, and I always got the sense that she _meant _it. That she knew."

"What do you mean she 'knew'? Knew what?"

He shrugged. "That my dad used to push me around. More so my mum—dad's sort of a spineless character, at the end of the day—but my dad, when mum would hassle him and he got frustrated, he took it out on me. Sort of frequently, I suppose."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I thought they were just…you know, annoying."

"That too. But also he'd hit me, toss me, whatever. Usually happened round Christmastime because of all the frustration. But then I'd get to your stupid uncle's, and after he'd pretend to make a Sickle come out of my ear (and then keep it for himself) I'd see your family in amongst all the creepy Slytherin twats and I'd smile, because at least _someone _wasn't there wasn't a horrid person. Your mum always gave me a Galleon. Every Christmas. I know for a fact that Reg didn't get one. That always made me extra happy."

"No, Mum hates him. She used to call him Regulina. Says pink cheeks like that on boys creep her out."

Sirius snorted. "He does look rather blusher-y, doesn't he? Permanently embarrassed, I always thought it was—embarrassed to be wearing a Fauntleroy suit, embarrassed to be going around with gelled hair, embarrassed to wear shined shoes just to go shopping at Diagon Alley. Bit nervous. I'd feel bad for him, if he weren't also a giant prat."

"So if my family is so fantastic, why don't you want them to know you're here?"

"Because they're fantastic. Despite your mum knowing about what my parents are like, they believe that underneath it all, everybody is fundamentally sane and good and logical, and they aren't. They'd want me to talk it through, patch things up, and I can't. I won't. I've already been blasted off the family tree—not like I can be sewn back on."

Eglantine bit her lip and thought. "Yeah, you're probably right. I remember Molly was talking about her grandparents once—she and Arthur came over to celebrate Bertie's getting the Auror job—and how they'd basically cut her off because of Arthur, not to mention sent her about fifty Howlers, and Mum said, 'No, you just need to _talk _to them, you're still their granddaughter.' And Molly just said, 'Are you mental? That's the entire _problem!_'"

He laughed halfheartedly, shifting on the milking stool. "I really do envy all you people. You normal people."

"Normal?" Eglantine snorted. "We're witches and wizards. What definition of 'normal' are you using? And I'm a witch named Eglantine. Extra abnormal."

"You know what I mean. You normal people with normal families."

Eglantine could remember some cliché about their being no normal families—everybody was equally weird, so being weird was actually _normal_, as long as your family wasn't composed entirely of schizophrenics or superstars or people who had extra limbs. But, if she was going to be honest, the conversation was boring her, and she didn't want to encourage it to go on any longer. She was supposed to be dragging Lily to the cinema, even though Lily hated doing things like that, because why be a witch if you just wound up going to the cinema anyway? But _The Man Who Fell to Earth _was strange enough to interest Lily. She liked strange things, things one wouldn't expect her to even be aware of.

"Yes, well," she said. "Are you going to be coming indoors? Only, I'm supposed to be leaving soon…"

"Where to?"

"Wherever I want to go." She smiled exaggeratedly. "Now go inside. It's hot up here. You'll get all smelly."

"Oh, so I can't care where you go, but you can care what I smell like?"

"If you smell badly enough, people will know you're there."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll go in. As long as you stop talking like I'm a smelly old dog."

"Dogs? Who mentioned _dogs_? I don't even like dogs. I'm more of a cat person. Or a no-animal person. They cramp one's style."

He gave her an odd look. "I happen to really like dogs."

"I don't. They're so _stupid_, so earnest. They bound right up to you with no thought as to whether you wish them to or not. And they shed all over you, and drool, and then off they go, completely unremorseful about ruining your outfit. They're _dopey_. Cats, on the other hand, don't give two shits about you, and they know when to say when with all the rubbing and lovey-dovey nonsense."

"Hmm. You know, maybe I really ought to take the hint."

"What hint?"

"About you. There's obviously nothing there if you don't like dogs. Must've been reading you wrong."

"Really? You don't pick up on the fact that I like your best friend, but you rule it out because of _dogs_? It's not as if you _are _a dog."

"Weren't you aware? All men are dogs, if you listen to some women."

"I thought you were supposed to be Mr. Chaste and Sensitive."

"Well, yes, but that doesn't mean I'm not also an asshole. Or a dog."

"You're obviously not a dog. You've got two legs, and you don't go around licking your own penis. NO. Wait. Do _not _make idiotic, childish jokes. I did not mean to mention penises."

"Are you sure you want to rob me of that golden opportunity? So many things I could say. So many avenues I could take that down."

"_Do not."_

He sighed, slumping his shoulders. "All right, I won't. But next time, I get to tell you _all _the jokes."

"Agreed. I didn't say I was going to listen."

"Deal."

She only lived an hour from Lily's by car, so she walked alone through the woods and fields to Crevan's barn. Alya's barn, now. The forest was dark and cool beneath the trees, sweet-smelling and humming with insects. It was faintly itchy; she couldn't say she was entirely a fan of the natural side of life, even though it was pleasant to admire it from a distance. She couldn't understand blokes like Tolkein who stood there in the middle of the woods, staring at everything, noticing the great panoply of wildlife right down to the color of the pebbles and the sheen of the beetles. I mean, why exactly were they so keen on it? There were quite a few trees, but damned if she knew what species, or felt the urge to give them personalities. Maybe she was missing the Gene of Poetic Observation.

A large hedge of heather had grown up behind the decaying hulk of the barn, and it had attracted dozens of bees. A hummingbird flitted by. Eglantine sneezed.

Though on the way she had had panicked visions of her car smoldering or dismantled, ruined by Alya or Victor or even Mel, the car was undisturbed. She drove it, nevertheless, with the invisibility charm enabled, at least until she pulled onto the main road.

When she arrived at Lily's, which was, from the outside, a depressing tan semi-detached with frilly white drapes in every window and an over-shined car in the drive, she rang the bell several times before being greeted reluctantly by a blustering, red-faced Petunia, who held her hands out as if they had spiders all over them.

"I wish my _sister _would answer the door _herself. _She knows I'm painting my _nails_."

"Oh, nice. What color?"

Petunia scowled. "Red, _obviously_."

Eglantine raised an eyebrow. "Bad day, Petunia?"

"They're _all _bad days!" said Petunia histrionically. "I have a _date _tonight and I've nothing to wear, and _apparently _magic isn't good for _anything_, it's just an _annoyance_, because Lily won't even help me!"

"We can't use magic out of school," Eglantine explained. Knowing Lily, she'd just said "no" without telling her sister why, because it was Petunia. "Especially not in front of…of people who aren't magic."

"Couldn't you just…cheat?"

"Not really. But what's wrong with what you've got on?"

"IT MAKES MY BUM LOOK GIGANTIC!"

Petunia spun around, shoving her bottom at Eglantine. "SEE?" she roared. "LOOK AT IT! HUGE!"

"Petunia. Your ass is as flat as your chest. Calm down."

"My _chest is flat_?"

"Oh, like that's news!" Eglantine said, sprinting now up the stairs to evade Petunia. She had had it. The girl was completely vapid. All she ever did was bitch about Lily and paint her nails and examine herself, apparently blindly, in the mirror.

When she got upstairs, she found Lily sitting at her desk next to the frog tank, frowning at a piece of paper with spiky handwriting on it. Her red hair was braided, which she never did except when she was exceptionally annoyed. Her Supremes poster had a dart through Diana Ross's beehive.

"Um…hello?" said Eglantine, suddenly afraid to come in. Lily had Moods. Moods in which, as Eglantine was terrified to point out, Lily looked just like Petunia.

"Hullo." Lily waved her in. "Forgot you were coming."

"Oh." She cleared her throat. "Brought the car. So we can drive."

"I'll never understand why you think it's so exciting. Flying is cooler."

"I've been flying since I was a toddler. I've accidentally ingested enough bugs to keep an insect collector busy for weeks. Cars are _enclosed_."

"All right, _Petunia_."

"I resent that. I don't go around screaming at people about the size of my bottom."

Lily smirked, but she was still looking at the letter, frowning.

"Bad love letter?"

"Hm? No." Lily crumpled it up. "It's just…" She looked sideways at Eglantine, sizing up whether to tell her or not. "I don't know if you, you know, noticed, but I…I'm not really friends with Severus anymore."

"I noticed." She didn't want to admit that she was happy about it, that she didn't exactly look fondly upon his sallow, looming presence. He was something of a killjoy. And he was creepy, the way he glided around like a little black raincloud, moping all over the castle, staring at Lily with his beady little eyes when he thought no one was looking. He'd never really taken to Eglantine, although he didn't entirely hate her. If anything, he seemed to take a scientific curiosity in the alchemy of Eglantine—what made her and Lily friends, what made her so different from the Averys and Rosiers (and Carlisles and Camillas) among whom she'd grown up. She couldn't tell whether he was so detached and cold because he was jealous of her hanging out with Lily when he wasn't around, or whether he could somehow tell that Eglantine knew about his little crush and was afraid to be too _known_. Possibly a mixture of both. She tolerated him, she pitied him his awkwardness and his dreariness, but she'd never really _liked _him.

"He's just…he's so mixed up with…it gives me a bad feeling. Dark Arts and all that. You know, just sort of skulking around with Avery and them. I don't want to be associated with that. It's wrong."

"Agreed." Eglantine sat backwards on Lily's other chair. Now they were getting somewhere. This whole time she'd assumed that Severus must've made some awkward overture that had made it too embarrassing for the friendship to continue, but this reason was far more intriguing somehow.

"I mean—well, do you know, I mean, know for sure, that that's what they do? Avery and Rosier and them? I mean…maybe I'm wrong, maybe they're not that bad…"

"Lily, we both know that they are. I thought Severus never really…you know…bought into it. Because of you—I mean, figured you being friends with him would've kept him out of it. I—er—I never would've introduced them if I'd thought he might be that gullible."

"Well, you didn't completely introduce them. You just put in a good word for him, which…you were trying to help him, in a way, you didn't _know_."

Had she known? She supposed she did, in a sense, know that Severus might be fascinated by the twisted hobbies of Avery and company, though she had spoken honestly: she thought that he'd mostly keep his hands clean to impress Lily. Evidently his leering was inspired less by esteem or affection than by lust. Even habit—she had always been his, his friend, his release, and for all that to be complicated by external influences spooked him a little.

"Well, no. Maybe I gave Severus a little too much credit."

"Maybe. It's just—" A couple of tears slid down Lily's cheek to mix with her freckles. "It's sad, you know? He was my friend for years. He basically…I mean, it sounds so corny, but he helped me discover myself. As a witch, I mean. And now…we're not really talking. And I _can't_, Tina, even if I want to, I can't be friendly with someone like that. I can't _endorse _something like that. Not only am I going to have to be a Prefect, probably, McGonagall all but guaranteed it—not only that—it's not _me_, it's not what I want to be known for, being friendly with this weird, pathetic little Slytherin boy who's into all this shady stuff… I don't know. He isn't the person I used to know."

"Lily. You are _not _crying over such a person as Severus Snape. Get up. We are going to watch David Bowie be weird, and you're going to get stared at by plenty of fanciable men, and you are not going to miss hanging out with Severus. You've got me now. I'm loads more fun. If you want me to, if you're feeling nostalgic, I can dump some macassar oil on my head and scowl at you."

"Don't be mean, Tina. I know you never liked him, but—"

"But _what_? He's not a good person. He may be many things, but he's not good. And he's not good for you."

"I know. That's why I'm not talking to him. But you haven't got to make fun of him for—for things he can't control."

"All right, calm down. Don't get all Petunia-ed up. I won't make fun of him ever again. Now let's go before we miss the show."

"We wouldn't even be in danger of missing the show," said Lily, combing out her braids with her fingers, "if you would consent to fly instead of using that stupid car."

"Have an adventure in Muggledom, Lily Evans. I know you miss it."

"I _don't_. The only good things about being a Muggle are music and Monty Python."

"And movies."

"Some movies."

"All movies except for _An Affair to Remember." _

"And _Citizen Kane._"

"Don't say that in public. People will think you're a yobbo."

"I _am _a yobbo. I'm a redheaded yobbo that can turn them into a toad, so they better leave me alone."

"You can't turn people into toads. You almost failed Transfiguration."

"I didn't. I had a string of unfortunate days culminating in my turning Peter Pettigrew's left ear into a soup bowl, which may or may not have been intentional. He got better."

"If it'd been anyone else's ear, you'd have failed. If it'd been James Potter's left ear, you'd have been drawn and quartered."

"Hung by my eyelids until death."

"Forced to listen to Celestina Warbeck until you went insane and leapt from the Astronomy Tower."

Lily smiled. It was a _smug _smile, more often seen on Petunia than Lily. "James likes me, you know. I think he's a bully and a prat. But it does rather boost one's confidence, knowing that a bloke that well-liked likes you and that _you don't like him back_."

"So he keeps trying to cozy up to you and you get the satisfaction of turning him down."

"Exactly." She had a far-off look in her eye that would've made Eglantine wonder if maybe she fancied James more than she let on, except she always referred to him as a prat. That didn't exactly denote eternal love. "Now we've got to find you someone, Tina. Someone much better than boring old Remus Lupin. He's so…_beige_. Have you noticed that? He's like all one color or something."

"No, I haven't noticed that," Eglantine said, a bit grumpily. She had only noticed his prepossessing perfection, and the fact that he had stopped speaking to her after she confessed her attraction. _Better off without me_…yeah, sure. "Anyway, I don't want any more admirers. I have them at the disco. And there's—"

"There's who?"

"Nobody."

"_Who_? Ooh, let me guess. It's more fun that way."

She wanted to tell her, so she'd seem less dismal than The Girl Who Got Rejected By Beige Remus, but…it was Sirius. He might be embarrassed. Shocked as she was that she even cared if he was embarrassed, she kept thinking of the pathetic face he'd made the previous night and she actually felt _guilty_, which she always tried to avoid feeling. She never felt guilty because most boys, when they kissed her, only wanted one result. Sirius didn't project the aura of horny desperation that most boys shared. He was…well, he was a friend. Even if there was that one mortifying hiccup that must never be acknowledged again, he was still a friend. One dumb (but enjoyable) kiss didn't cancel out their friendship. Hopefully.

"Sam. You wouldn't know him. From the disco."

"The disco…. Don't you want, you know, a wizard? I feel like you'd be bored being with a Muggle—I mean, I know you're weirdly interested in them, but still."

"I don't want anyone, really. I just want to have fun." This was true. Although she was becoming less sure about what _fun _actually was. Fun definitely was driving around with Cam, whether Cam wanted to admit it or not. She wasn't certain anymore about _fun _having anything to do with kissing random Muggle boys at discos. It was, but then…it started to be something else. It started to be flat, like soda with all the bubbles stirred out. It still tasted the same, but it was missing something vital.

Lily grinned. "Let's have fun this year, then. I mean, I still have to be an _example_, but let's see what's out there. Within reason. No resorting to Peter."

Despite the presence of only Muggle boys, Lily and Eglantine enjoyed themselves at the theater. Eglantine, as usual, left with numbers—two, from Dave and George—and Lily left with four, which she said she'd give to Petunia. Eglantine actually rather fancied Dave. He was very serious-looking, with horn-rimmed glasses, but he was witty, in a kind of awkward, nerdy manner. Lily said, "Of course you like him, he's Muggle Remus with thin lips and glasses and the same beigeness." But of course he was _different_, he was Dave.

She could see the light on in her closet when she returned home. Sirius was in there, reading.

"What's wrong with you? Are you ill?" she said.

"No, why?"

"Reading. You don't read."

"I read!" he protested, looking offended. "Are you implying that I'm stupid?"

"No, I'm implying that you hate reading. What _are _you reading?"

"One of your curse books. Educational reading, this."

"Oh. That's normal, then."

"I learned how to make my enemy's toenails grow instantly ten feet. Disgusting. I look forward to using it on someone."

"Ooh, toenails? I didn't see that one."

"_Pedestro elongatum._ Sounds like a sort of punishment for perverts, doesn't it?"

"Did you see the one about the slugs? I quite fancy the slug one, myself. _Nobody _can handle slugs."

"No, must've missed that one." He flipped a section back. "And, by the way, no one can handle slugs. They're slippery."

"They're on page three hundred ninety four. Right underneath _Helpful Hints for Evading Lawsuits: Avoid Witnesses When Possible._"

"Really thought of everything, haven't they, Prince and Grubkauer?"

"Yes. They even have a list of legal loopholes in the back, right after a list of unscrupulous lawyers who'll blackmail people for you."

"Fascinating. Where'd you find it?"

She bit her lip. "Nicked it."

"Where?"

"Crevan's."

"Ah." He wet his thumb and flipped the page. "Your uncle has—had—excellent taste in curse books."

"He probably never read it."

"True. Not really a Renaissance wizard, your uncle."

"Oh, is that the bubble-butt one?" She swatted his hand away from the diagram. (She noticed that it was warm and rough. This was not an observation she wanted to dwell on.) "I _wish _I could use that one on Lily's sister. She's convinced her bottom is enormous, but it's as flat as a wall."

"Bubble Butt? Hmm. Peter Pettigrew, King of the Bubble Butts…"

"Buttigrew."

"Haze of Trout. This one makes the other person smell like fish for three days."

"Wet Socks."

"Bunchy Pants."

"Cry-Baby."

"Otter Hands."

"Horse Laughter."

"They get awfully specific as they go on, don't they? Here's one to make your enemy wake every morning to the clarion sound of tubas playing dissonant chords for three hours…."

Eglantine and Sirius spent the next two hours going through curses and hexes, making independent lists and then reading them out, along with a notation of who they'd use them on. Before they realized it, it was one in the morning.

Sirius yawned. "I suppose I'd better turn in. I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm spending a couple days at Remus's before the Potters come back. He's feeling better."

"Oh…all right."

"Don't worry, I won't tell him. Anything."

"Okay."

"Is something else bothering you?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"No."

She looked up. It was a split-second decision. She would never know why she did it, because she would always maintain that she'd never wanted to do it; but she had wanted to, and without any other thought, she kissed him.

It was just as good the second time.


	5. Chapter 5

five

They had spent an hour before they fell asleep kissing each other, and another hour just lying there in each other's arms. Eglantine thought that the whole situation was strange. She hadn't expected, first of all, to like it this much. It was strange that it _wasn't _strange: that feeling his tongue rub against hers wasn't irrevocably awkward, that feeling the hard warmth of his chest against her shoulder wasn't too close for her to tolerate from him, that she didn't want to put a stop to any of it. He had nascent stubble, and it was tinted bluish. His upper lip was thicker than she'd noticed. He had tiny freckles right beneath his eyes.

_None of this means anything, do you realize that_? She wanted to say it, but she didn't; whether because it wasn't true, or because she just didn't want it to stop yet, she didn't know. There was a lot, she found, that she didn't know in regards to this.

She didn't want it to be real, because if it were real, it might change her into someone she didn't want to be. She wanted to follow in Bertie's steps—if her grades were good enough—and if not, well, there was always music. Music in the wizarding world was absolutely pathetic, and she knew she could fix it; but she couldn't fix it with some hanger-on boy, could she? He could only hold her back. Her brother had had a successful Quidditch career before he got married; it had only been since his marriage that he started to play less excitingly and in fewer matches. Bertie might've had more initiative to learn more curses, more defenses, if he hadn't been so tied up with his on-and-off fling with Marlene McKinnon. Her parents had long been the exception to the rule, but Sirius was not on par with them, and she wasn't sure she was either. She couldn't take the risk of picking such a close partner—and it was obvious that that was what he wanted. Better alone than with somebody that _expected_.

It was something more and worse than pleasant: it was comfortable. Comfort frightened Eglantine. It was how someone abandoned their vigil over their lives, lost control, made mistakes. Comfort was to be avoided.

She was relieved when he woke to go in the morning. She pretended to be asleep as he gathered his belongings and crept out the window, kissing her goodbye. She hoped he would never kiss her again.

He wrote her during the remainder of the summer. She burned the envelopes when she received them, not even opening them, because she didn't want to possess any knowledge that might conflict with her story, which was to be that they'd never arrived. In the weeks that followed, she saw a lot of Dave from the movies, whose surname, she learned, was Pucey. She was relieved that she wasn't going to ever get married, because what if one fell haplessly in love with a person named Pucey? Eglantine Pucey had the ring of sour-faced grandmother about it.

Dave turned out to be more interesting than she'd bargained for, and what was even more encouraging, he was useful. He was, apart from being funny, a musical virtuoso. He could play guitar, drums, piano, even the flute. He hoped to tour with the Beatles or the Who. They spent hours listening to records together. She even smoked pot with him, even though it only made her dopey and jittery at the same time. (He didn't suggest their doing it again: Dave was considerate.) They only kissed. It was rather glorious. She didn't love Dave, but she loved being with Dave. She wasn't restless, or passionate, or anything. It was perfectly calm, like being home alone, only instead of talking to herself she was talking to Dave. His mild blue eyes were almost gray, like a calm winter sea, and his hair fell across his eyes like Remus's did but she was even starting to compare Dave favorably to Remus. She wondered what Sirius would think about all this, about the fact that she'd chosen spending time with the Midlands' Musical Muggle over writing him back even once. She still felt a bit guilty, but she reminded herself that he would get over it.

August came faster than she'd hoped. She was startled when she found that she actually hoped that Dave wouldn't find someone else while she was at Hogwarts (or, as she informed him, "a stupid girls' school in Scotland that my grandmother went to"). Normally she couldn't wait for them to find someone else so they'd stop bothering her, but that was the thing about Dave: he didn't bother her. Eglantine deemed this as good as love, and when he told her he loved her back, he seemed over the moon about it, and she wasn't the slightest bit irate or bored that he was so happy. This hadn't happened before. On the basis of Eglantine's lack of negative adjectives alone, Lily was ready to plan their wedding (earthy, sort of a hippie vibe, in a barn somewhere, with lots of music and lemon tarts).

She did her shopping rather last-minute with Cam. People who made an event of it—first-years' parents and wealthy assholes—had already been there for several days by the time Eglantine and Cam visited Diagon Alley, and everybody was pretty well entrenched. Outside Fortescue's, Narcissa Black was sharing a large sundae with Lucius. Neither of them were eating it: Narcissa was placing the spoon artfully in her pink-painted mouth as she glared at passersby, likely making mental notes of their inadequacies; Lucius was reading the newspaper and making disgruntled remarks to Narcissa, who of course wasn't listening.

"Camilla! Cam Bertrand!" shrieked Narcissa.

"What the hell?" Cam muttered. She'd always been friendly with Narcissa—despite Cam's vocal distaste for both Bellatrix and Andromeda, who were the only people she really disliked (though Eglantine didn't really understand the Andromeda hatred)—but never really _friends. _The shrieking was unusual.

"Camillaaaaah! I'm _engaged_, did Mel tell you? Me and Lucius! We're getting married next year! At his family's manor home! In _Wiltshire_!"

"Oh. Congratulations!" said Cam. She hugged Narcissa awkwardly, as this was what Narcissa wanted. "Er—that the ring? Very—er—nice."

The diamond was the size of a small dormouse, surrounded with emeralds and set in glaringly polished silver. "It was his grandmother's! Isn't it nice! Antique!"

Eglantine was surprised that the world had not run out of exclamation marks immediately following Narcissa's engagement. She drifted inconspicuously away, up the stairs of Madam Malkin's, colliding hard with Frank Longbottom. He was older, graduated last year. The best word for Frank had been _amiable_—good-natured, not particularly bright, not stupid, just sort of friendly, like a smiling baby. Maybe she only thought of babies because of his round cheeks. They were the only round thing about him: he looked like a dandelion.

"Tina! How've you been?" He'd tutored her in Herbology a couple times when she'd been stuck in the greenhouses trying to comprehend it all, she remembered. It'd been one of his better subjects. And in return she'd helped him with Muggle Studies. His mother, an angry-looking character with horrid taste in clothing, hadn't been too keen on Muggles. She used to shake her cane at them in Kings Cross rather conspicuously, until the Ministry told her to stop.

"All right." To her, it seemed a loaded question because of Uncle Crevan, though knowing Frank, he hadn't put two and two together. "You?"

"Great." He beamed. "Just picking up my Auror robes. Alice and I both got picked up at the same time."

"Oh! Er—great." All she could think of was Bertie. The odds weren't exactly in Frank and Alice's favor, not lately. Bertie had been her casualty, but far from the only one.

"Nearly done with school, aren't you?"

"Well, not really. This'll be my sixth year."

"Oh. I thought you were older. Ah, well! Can't hurt for people to think you're older, eh? People usually think I'm about seven."

Laughing at his own observation, Frank jolted forward. Behind him were two Slytherins, Damon Mulciber and Tim Wilkes, shoving him aside.

"Ugh, get out of the _way_, would you?" said Wilkes, with an expression suggestive of a hooked bass. He stopped short in front of Eglantine, unsure of what to do. She could almost hear his thought process, trying to do the Slytherin Rat Algorithm in his head: how many "good people" versus "bad people" was she related to, and was it worth his while to antagonize her, and would he lose face by _not _antagonizing her?

It proved too difficult for Wilkes, because he just stood there.

"Are you _lost_? Do you need an adult to show you where to go?" said Frank. That was the thing about Frank. He was always nice. Even when being nice was wonderfully belittling to the person he was being nice at.

"Oh, like _you're _an adult, ass-face."

"No, but he is an Auror. And, unless you'd like to get on the bad side of an Auror," Eglantine added quietly, "which I'm _sure _your parents wouldn't be pleased about, I'd just be on your way."

The calculations he'd done with the Slytherin Rat Algorithm just got recalculated to include the implication of potential blackmail. This computation was entirely beyond him. Wilkes cleared his throat. Mulciber, a thin, weedy twerp of a person with about seven brain cells to work with, glared at the space between Frank and Eglantine because he didn't know who precisely to loathe in that moment.

"All right. But I'd—I'd _watch out _if I were you."

"Don't worry, I won't need to."

This struck Mulciber as oddly ominous, and he scurried, anxious to join Wilkes, off into the moving crowd.

"Odd people," Frank said. This was the closest, Eglantine knew, that Frank Longbottom ever got to calling somebody a git.

"Where I come from, we call them little arrogant motherfuckers, but you always were nicer than I was," said Eglantine. "Well, I've got to get in there. Say hello to Alice."


	6. Chapter 6

six

"Why is it that wherever we go, the Black sisters are there?" said Cam, scowling into her soup at the Leaky Cauldron at suppertime. "I mean, I can't get _away _from them. I come here, and there's Narcissa. I went into Knockturn Alley a couple of days ago, and there's Bellatrix."

"Why were you in Knockturn Alley?"

"Research. Some bloke evaded capture last week and someone said they'd seen him in Knockturn Alley, so I had to get a witness statement."

"Bellatrix probably killed and ate him."

"Oh, honestly, Eglantine. She's not a _cannibal. _She may be many other things—"

"But how well do we really know our homicidal maniacs?"

"We don't _know _she's a homicidal maniac."

Eglantine gave her a look. "Have you seen her? She probably has arsenic hidden in her hair."

"It has gotten rather unruly, hasn't it?" said Cam, wrinkling her nose. "Hey, isn't that Sirius? Finally left your closet, I see."

Eglantine kicked her sister under the table. "You _knew_?"

Cam blew on her soup and slurped it. "Of course I did. I heard him in there. I have excellent hearing."

"How did you know it was him? Could've been anybody."

Cam rolled her eyes. "Sure it could. I'm just surprised he's out in broad daylight with his cousins about."

"I'm not. He doesn't care about them."

Sirius was at the bar with, of all people, Remus. It bothered Eglantine less than it used to. She had Dave to hide behind now. Pleasant, engaging, Muggle Dave who loved her. Completely removed from this place and everything about it. Sirius saw her and, with an expression that perfectly blended offended with puzzled, said something to Remus and made his way over.

"Hullo," he said flatly. "Eglantine, can I talk to you?"

"Aren't you talking to me now?"

"I meant—er—alone."

She couldn't say no. She'd ignored his letters and was about to be, she suspected, rather rude. She had to at least _talk _to him. She stood up and walked toward a narrow hallway, away from Camilla and Remus.

"I know you got my letters. What happened?" he blurted immediately, his eyes anxious.

"Nothing happened." She swallowed. "And I do mean _nothing_. And I never got any letters. I didn't know about them."

"You knew about them."

"I didn't."

"Don't lie. I can tell. Eglantine, I—I know I'm not crazy. There's something here. It felt…normal. Why won't you admit it? Why is it so hard for you to—" He looked into her eyes. His were dark grey in this light, and if he hadn't had just a touch of the same pinkness that Regulus's cheeks had, you almost would've thought he was in black and white. "You know what? Never mind. I give up. I should've given up before."

Victory. This was a victory, she reminded herself. It was always a victory when they gave up, because you'd survived, you'd resisted their impulse to try to change your course, their will-o-the-wisp efforts to lure you away. When you resisted, you were supposed to realize that, like the will-o-the-wisp, they were merely a flicker on the horizon. It was possible that he was something else.

Then again, she was probably wrong. Of course he was just a flicker. Everybody was.

She returned to Camilla as if nothing had happened, and, in fact, it hadn't. She had once again been allowed to maintain her life as it was.

"Cam," she said, sitting down—her broccoli was cold. "I know Mum and Dad have been saying that there're no leads about Uncle Crevan, but…you don't know anything, do you? I mean, Mel hasn't said anything?"

"No." Cam sipped her soup with her lips almost closed. It was infuriating. And she was wearing that Alice band again. "But then, she wouldn't, would she? I don't talk to her much, anyway. She's always out of the office, talking to people in other departments."

"Either that, or she's just like her mother, and _that's _what she's doing."

"Please don't call my boss a secret Death Eater. I don't want to think that my Christmas truffles every year are Death Eater truffles."

"Well, yeah, but she was our cousin first, wasn't she? Alya's daughter."

This time Cam's lips weren't even _open_, so where the hell did the soup go? "What did Sirius want?" she said.

"Oh, no. No changing the subject. Not the first time I bring it up in weeks."

"It's not my fault you haven't talked about it. I've talked about it plenty with Mum and Dad and Carlisle." She dabbed her lips with her napkin like she was at a tea party. Eglantine was sure she _always _ate like this. That made it even more irritating. Did she eat like this when she was at home alone, setting up her plate and knife and fork and pretending the Queen was watching? "You know, you did the same thing after Bertie died. You didn't really talk about it. I think you have a problem facing up to things, Tina."

"I talked about it plenty. Just not to you," snapped Eglantine. Even though that wasn't strictly true. She'd told Lily and Severus. (And Severus she hadn't exactly _told._ He only heard because he happened to be talking to Lily at the time and she hadn't felt like telling him to get lost.)

"Good. That's healthy," Cam said primly.

"So now I'm trying to talk about Crevan."

"Why?"

"Because I want to."

"Did Sirius bring it up?"

"No."

"Well, normally, you'd have come back and told me what he wanted. But you came back and asked about uncle Crevan. Why?"

Eglantine glared at her sister. "Don't try to analyze my brain, _Camilla_. It's annoying. You can't analyze my brain. It's all transparent."

Cam giggled. "No, it's not. It's funny that you think that, though."

"Ugh, forget it." Eglantine pulled her school list out of the pocket of her robes. "I still need books. You can go where you want, though. I'm buying my own."

"Suit yourself. I'm going to brave the outdoors again and buy pens. I need new ones."

Eglantine raised an eyebrow. Her sister was weird about pens. She could take an hour just selecting a pen. It was a form of psychosis.

Severus was in the bookshop, hunched in a corner over a potions book, but in true Severus fashion, he didn't acknowledge her.

"Hullooooo," Eglantine said. She'd been standing there for a full minute. She had even resorted to breathing loudly.

"Oh. Hullo, Eglantine." He always called her Eglantine. She thought he actually liked her name as it was, making him the one living person besides her mother who did.

"What's that? Looks gruesome." The book featured a bloke turned inside out, who was being rubbed with leaves.

"Erm," said Severus.

"Dark Magic potions?"

He looked up, simultaneously panicked and defiant. "_Ssh_."

"What? I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? You should see the library my uncle left behind."

"Wish I could."

It was hard to think of how to say it, especially to someone who was so naïve about it all. That her uncle's blindness to what Dark Magic really _meant_, what it _did_, was quite possibly the reason he was dead. That it was dangerous. That it was all well and good to know about it, but to _like _it…it could blind you to your own mortality, in a way. Made you think you were colder, steelier, smarter, when you weren't. You were still flesh and bone. You were still fragile.

Instead she said, "Where's Lily? I imagine you two didn't come together this year."

He brought the book infinitesimally closer to his nose. "No, we didn't."

"Is she here, d' you know?"

"I don't know. I imagine she came herself. Or maybe with her mum."

"Mrs. Evans? Nah, she wouldn't come here. She'd be afraid people could sense her Muggleness and try to turn her into a shrub."

"Oh. I wouldn't know."

"You never met Mrs. Evans?" Eglantine was genuinely puzzled about this. "You've never met Lily's family?"

"Just briefly at the train. My mum isn't really…tolerant of Muggles. I've not seen enough of them to know what they're like."

"Oh. Well, you're not missing much, they're a bit boring. And her sister's a nightmare. Well, enjoy your book."

"I—you haven't got a bit of parchment, have you? I was going to copy this."

"Aren't you going to buy it?"

The book was touching his nose now. "Can't."

Eglantine sighed and plopped two Galleons onto his lap. "My uncle left me and all my siblings fifty Galleons. He'd want you to have the book. Just buy the stupid thing, won't you?" _Crevan, consider this the one time I'm knowingly doing something you'd want. But only because I feel bad for all of you Dark Wizard morons, _she thought.

He didn't say thank you. His hands closed wordlessly around the coins. She could tell that he was trying not to smile.

He was really quite pathetic and inoffensive, Severus. To hear Lily talk, you'd think he was in training to be the next Voldemort. He was merely a bad-tempered, weedy, awkward boy with terrible hair.

She didn't take long in the bookshop on purpose. Before Cam was done with her pen excursion, she was going into Knockturn Alley. Either someone would try to murder her, or…she wasn't sure, exactly, but if anyone did know about Crevan, they'd be in Knockturn Alley.

She felt ashamed that she had been doing so well at not thinking about it, at thinking it didn't matter if she did. After all, she was alive, so by default, she stood a chance of at least finding out who had actually killed him.

If she told Cam, if she let Cam think about it for five minutes, she would probably accuse her of displacing her guilt about Sirius onto Crevan's death, because Crevan was, factually, dead, and she had no tangible obligation to solve the case or to even contemplate it. (Not that she had an obligation to Sirius. But she owed him something emotionally, she felt—words or something—and she refused to own up to it, whatever it was.) She wanted to just be free. And taking on this puzzle was a form of freedom. She could retreat to it whenever she wanted.


	7. Chapter 7

seven

Knockturn was a touch less busy. Strange-looking witches and wizards milled around, looking cagily about them, usually frowning. (People who smiled in Knockturn Alley were regarded either as spies or the benignly mad.) Grimy signs dangled above, and everything was arranged in a grimmer interpretation of Diagon Alley: awnings were tattered and filthy, shop windows were cluttered and dark, mice and insects skittered to and fro. The words _hygiene _and _marketing _were seldom used here.

Alya had taken all the young Bertrands here, once, after her aunts had had to move their robe business (now defunct) to the space above Burgin and Burke's after rent skyrocketed in Diagon Alley. It had been Victor's sixth year, and he'd been appointed to be a Prefect, so Alya—because all Alya celebrations required a slight touch of patronizing showboating and a forceful shove of making everybody involved memorably uncomfortable—took all the Bertrand children, both hers and Osbert's, to get new dress robes for the resulting party. She was displeased with the fact that Melusina and Camilla had both gotten too tall for theirs, which made them, in her words, Unfit to be Seen. They had spent four hours in the dingy shop being measured, poked, and prodded, and had exited looking like some of the ocean's most spectacular ruffled sea slugs.

Eglantine could not say that the place held fond memories. Besides the time she'd gone with Alya, she'd only ever been one other time, with Bertie. He was in disguise, and she was pretending to be his niece. She wasn't even authorized—she couldn't have been, being only eleven—to help with whatever surveillance he was doing, but something made him include her anyway. They went into Borgin and Burke, and he told her to look out for anything that looked especially old or arcane. They had to abandon the plot when some elderly relation of Sirius's came in and recognized her.

She thought about this now, wondering if maybe the task that Bertie had been assigned might connect his death with Crevan's. Crevan had been a frequent customer at Borgin and Burke's, she knew: one of them, she thought Burke, had been a fixture of Crevan's candlelight dinner parties. He was an old, bony man with long straggles of gray hair. (She imagined that, if Severus made it to old age without somebody shoving him out of a tower first out of sheer aggravation, he would eventually look exactly like Burke.)

She didn't even know what, or who, she might be looking for as she headed into the one shop that had the potential to connect Bertie and Crevan—both dead, both killed by Death Eaters, both linked to Dolohov. A sudden flash of inspiration, perhaps. She felt that Dolohov was too obvious of a solution, but if not him, who?

The door to Burgin and Burke's was closed, as it always was, and had an air of forbidding misanthropy. There might as well have been a sign that said, _Don't even think about entering. You're an annoying berk and not rich enough._ The doorknob, made of heavily tarnished brass, was broken, and clattered as Eglantine turned it.

It was Knockturn's most famous shop for a reason. The place had a fairly rapid turnaround of distasteful, gory, or cursed objects, all placed crowdedly but neatly on antique furniture. Narcissa and Lucius were here, but they were disappearing into a back room with Burke; a corpulent, dark-haired man—possibly in his early twenties, possibly younger—was perched precariously upon a small stool behind the counter. He toppled off it to stand when he saw Eglantine.

"GoodafternoonRobertGoylehowcanIhelpyou," he droned rapidly. He didn't breathe. Evidently part of his sales training had consisted of lessons in pretending he'd just sprinted a long distance. Or, for that matter, a short distance.

She hadn't exactly planned ahead for this. "I—er—well, I was wondering. My uncle was a…a very faithful customer of Borgin and Burke's, and…well, I was wondering if he'd left any kind of…list, or purchases on credit when he died. See, my aunt misses him terribly, and, er, if I could bring her something he'd been planning to buy, something that might remind her of him…."

"'Angonjustonemoment," Goyle said, squeezing through a narrow gap between counters. He approached a small file cabinet. "Whatwas'isname?"

"Crevan Bertrand."

Goyle's knockwurst fingers paused just momentarily before grabbing the "B" drawer and opening it. He thumbed through a series of index cards and pulled one out. "CrevanBertrand'ereyouareMiss." He handed it to her.

This Goyle was almost certainly brand new to Borgin and Burke's. She couldn't imagine Burke handing over customer information so blithely: he'd pretend the file cabinet didn't even exist until you threatened his manhood, and even then, he'd lie to you about what was on the card. He'd been furtive about everything. Once, she'd heard someone, Rosier maybe, trying to make small talk with him at the punch bowl. Rosier asked him how the shop was, and he'd replied, "What shop? There's no shop. I don't know what you mean."

Her uncle had been making payments on a moonstone pendant from Hungary, said to have belonged to Erzsebet Báthory (worth 2520 Galleons), a snake bracelet that had belonged to some distant cousin of Salazar Slytherin's (2400 Galleons) and a book about early versions of the Unforgiveable Curses that had belonged to a man named Peverell (6200 Galleons).

"Had expensive tastes, my uncle, eh?" she remarked to Goyle.

"Definitelymiss." Goyle nodded fervently. He took a deep breath. "I do remember 'im. Came in quite a lot, 'e did. Too bad about what 'appened."

"Yes, indeed." She stared hard at the card. "Although some have said he deserved it."

"There's always somebody envious out there who'll say that, eh? Tragic thing, is envy."

"Indeed." She smiled brightly. It was the same smile that'd gotten her into packed discos and even a private party thrown by Roger Moore. (She hadn't actually _seen _Roger Moore, but still. It had been his party.) "Might I just keep this card?"

"I—I mean, we're not supposed—" Goyle peered stagily down the hallway that Lucius and Narcissa had gone with Burke. "I'll make a duplicate. Go on, take it."

"Thanks." She smiled again. "I know my uncle would appreciate it."

Goyle smiled back. "Say—er—you wouldn't be free around, er, eight, would you?"

"Not really. Sorry. I've got plans. See you!"

She didn't really think someone had murdered Crevan over an item, but everything was evidence, wasn't it? That's what Bertie would've thought. On her way out, she stopped to look at a shrunken head in a brass container and the door jingled merrily.

It was her cousin Mel—Cam's boss Mel. Her thin frame was clad in dark burgundy robes, and her dark hair was curled in corkscrews. Eglantine could tell from her surprised eyebrows that she hadn't expected to be met with any familiar faces.

Eglantine shoved the card into her pants, not having anywhere else to put it.

"Eglantine! I didn't know you—er—were in London."

"No? I thought Cam would've mentioned it. She's back in Diagon Alley looking for pens," said Eglantine.

Mel laughed nervously. "Cam and her pens! Um. So what brings you into Borgin and Burke? I didn't know you—er—had an interest."

"I don't normally. I was looking for something to give to your mum. Kind of a sympathy gift, you know? How's she getting on?"

"Er—as well as can be expected. We all miss Father terribly!"

_I'm sure you do_, thought Eglantine. "Do they know who did it?"

"Not a clue." Eglantine had never yet tried Legilimency, but she was almost certain that Mel was telling the truth. "Mum's been—er—investigating. But nobody really knows, or at least, no one's owned up to it."

"Weird. And tragic. Well—Cam will be waiting for me. She doesn't know I'm here. See you later, Mel."

The Bertrands were not huggers, and Eglantine deflected an attempt by Mel to embrace her. She felt like an ass, but she really didn't trust Mel. She was probably just trying to see if she'd hidden anything.

Cam was still picking out pens. She had a basket full of pens, and was still browsing for more. Everybody she knew would be receiving a fresh quill for their birthdays until they died.

Cam and Eglantine spent the night in a reasonably comfortable Muggle hotel near Diagon Alley. The arrangement suited both sisters: Cam thought that the Leaky Cauldron was unforgivably unsanitary, and that the beds were full of mites; and Eglantine wanted to watch television, which was available in the pub area. There was no good television. The hotel manager had put on the news, and crabbed at Eglantine when she suggested changing it. She sat in the pub bar sipping discontentedly at a martini she'd talked him into giving her, which she pretended to like because of James Bond. Pasty newscasters droned on about MPs and parliamentary decisions and some teenage prankster from York who was becoming mildly famous for blowing up skips.

After the weather, one story caught Eglantine's attention. A series of deaths in Wiltshire, mysterious deaths, in which the deceased person was found rigid and frightened-looking with no actual cause of death. There was no poison in the system, no evidence of a heart attack. Plenty of people were saying extraterrestrials were responsible; others were claiming mysterious government research. The only thing connecting the deaths was the presence of green fireworks.

When she returned to the hotel room, Cam was lying on her stomach, sipping a cup of tea and writing in a fuzzy purple notebook. She was using a large pink quill.

"Is that—is that a _diary_? When did you start keeping a diary?"

Cam turned as pink as the quill. "It's—it's for work. It's disguised. How was, er, how was the telly?"

"Oh, boring. Except for the Death Eaters."

"What? Oh, shit, I've blotted it."

"Yeah. Death Eaters. Even the Muggles are noticing. Green fireworks. Mysterious deaths. Didn't Narcissa say that Lucius Malfoy lived in Wiltshire?"

"What does that have to do with it?"

"That's where a lot of the deaths are."

Cam rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Tina. Not everyone is a Death Eater. And I _really _don't think Lucius Malfoy has it in him. He probably spends all his free time brushing his hair and singing love songs to himself."

"He is one. I can _tell_."

"Oh, suddenly you're the Death Eater expert, are you?"

There was a tapping at the window. A small brown screech owl was hovering outside, holding a letter. Eglantine took the letter and fed him one of the complimentary biscuits from the end table by the window, and off he went.

"It's for _you_," she said, genuinely surprised. She'd thought it must be from Sirius. (She'd hoped it might be from Remus.)

Cam's grin was almost frightening. She jumped off the bed, snatched the envelope from her sister's hands, and ran for the bathroom. She let out a small squeal as she opened the door.

Eglantine allowed herself to collapse onto the bed. It bounced her halfway up into the air again, and then she stayed immobile. This was tedious. Her sister was acting mental, Sirius had suddenly decided to be a _boy_, she hadn't even heard from Lily… It was pretty depressing that the only person in her year she'd really chatted to was Severus.

She wondered what Mel had been doing in Borgin and Burke's. She hoped that that idiotic Goyle hadn't told her that he'd given Eglantine the card.. As it was, there wasn't really anything she could change about the situation, so there was no use worrying over it.

She took the card from out of her pants. Six thousand Galleons on a book. What, exactly, was _in _that book?


	8. Chapter 8

Eight

King's Cross was boiling hot, even on Platform 9 ¾. Eglantine stood alone with her trunk between two posts, curiously watching the other families. A blond boy's mother was smoothing his hair down, telling him to remember his spot cream; an eccentrically-dressed couple from Ireland was coaching their eleven-year-old son on what to do if the Sorting Hat tried to put him in Hufflepuff. Her parents had accompanied her to the platform exactly twice: once, in second year, when James Potter had been (foolishly) attempting to bully her; and once in fourth year. Every other year it'd either been Aunt Alya, because she was already going, or Bertie, because he was ten years older and lived in London, _right there in London_, you can't tell me (as their mother said) that you are too busy to take your sister to get on the train.

Now there was no Bertie. And, in a sense, no Aunt Alya. There was only Death Eater Alya, who was a stranger.

Lily was standing with Claire Hooper, another Gryffindor, and at a very safe distance were Snape and his gaggle of Slytherin geese. Damon Mulciber and Tim Wilkes were among them, as well as Nicholas Avery and Evan Rosier. The inner circle. They all looked pale, faintly dirty, and criminal.

She resolutely refused to look for Sirius. She wondered if his parents would be here at all with Regulus—if they'd try to make a scene, or if they'd ignore him. Just like she was.

She felt a tapping on her shoulder. It was Peter Pettigrew, standing there with his obnoxious, giant, watery eyes. And teeth with which he could eat an apple through a fence.

"Hi, Peter."

"Hi, Eggy. Have—have you seen Sirius and James?"

"Nope."

"Can you see them?"

She gave him a look. "_No_. I just said I hadn't seen them."

"You're taller than I am, is all."

"I don't know why you'd want to admit something like that."

He cleared his throat. "_Hem_. So, er—how was your summer?"

"Oh, just splendid. My uncle got murdered by Death Eaters. That was especially fun. You?"

Peter put his head down and simply shuffled away. Bloody twit.

When the train arrived, she joined Lily and Claire in a compartment, and watched Severus glide by, with only the hint of a maudlin side-glance through the window. Really, it was too absurd. She didn't think he'd be much of a Casanova at any point in his life, especially not given what his mother looked like, but she hoped that one day he figured out his hair, lost his general mien of cantankerousness, and got an actual date so he'd stop being hung up on Lily.

Claire had always faintly annoyed Eglantine. She reminded her of one of those Disney princesses that Carlisle and Linda's daughter Susan was so fond of, with their big kittenish eyes and squeaky voices and airs of exhausting, exacting goodwill. Peter really liked Claire: that was another point against her, because anybody Peter liked must have something missing upstairs. (Somehow Sirius and Remus didn't fall under this umbrella, firstly because Peter admired them more than liked them, and secondly because Eglantine felt that her liking them must cancel out Peter.) Claire had black hair, perfect eyebrows that she must have spent hours tweezing though no one ever caught her doing it, and rather massive blue eyes to go with her round snub nose. She was currently squeaking to Lily about a really _nice _boy she'd met (also called Dave, and Eglantine's entire body froze for a moment before Claire mentioned that her Dave was a redhead from Glasgow), and a really _nice _book she'd read about using flowers in magic, and a really _nice _skirt she'd purchased. Everything that pleased Claire was nice. Eglantine was certain that if Claire ever had any kind of sexual experience, it would be described as _nice_. ("Nice kissing, Dave. Pull my hair. That feels nice.")

"Oh, and I _heard _about your poor uncle, Tina. I do pity his poor family. How are they? How are you?" Claire squeaked with a face of exaggerated concern. She wasn't exaggerating it to be sarcastic. That was just Claire.

"Fine, thanks," said Eglantine. (That was another of Claire's words. "Poor." A person could have a net worth of thirty million Galleons, and if they so much as stubbed their toe, it was "poor Croesus.") She pulled out one of her curse books, hoping it would be a Claire deterrent.

Indeed, Claire spent much of the journey chattering to Lily. Eglantine was grateful to pick up on the fact that Claire seemed to find her boring. It was only mildly annoying because of her shattering pitch, and Eglantine was able to get a good chunk of the book (which, incidentally, had been the one she'd been reading that night with Sirius) out of the way. The sky was just beginning to turn orange with the sunset when there was a tapping at the door.

She expected to look up and see James wanting Lily, or Severus wanting Lily, or somebody wanting anybody but her—or, failing that, the witch with the snacks. It wasn't. It was a burly, clueless-looking boy, a fourth-year she vaguely recognized as a Slytherin who spent most of his time carrying things for Avery and Rosier. He was flanked by Mulciber and Wilkes. Claire said something like, _eep._

"Oh, come on," Eglantine said to her. She opened the door. "What?" she said.

"I'm Sam Goyle, and you cost my brother his job," said the clueless-looking boy, in a more nasal, grumpy version of his apparent brother's breathless chatter. She could see the resemblance, now that this Sam mentioned that Robert Goyle was his brother: They both had the same square, podgy head and flared nostrils and sense of being confused by the very air they breathed.

"Sorry to hear it," Eglantine said. It sounded flat, because that was the only way she wouldn't feel like she was being snippy, but in a way, she actually was. Robert Goyle had been stupid, but a great deal more pleasant than most people in Knockturn Alley.

"No, you're not. You're not sorry at all." Tim Wilkes gave him an encouraging nudge. "_Cru—"_

All three boys were surprised to see Sam Goyle's wand fly out of his hands into the waiting palm of Severus Snape. When they saw him, they actually looked afraid. Eglantine was both oddly proud of Severus for managing to actually intimidate somebody, and worried. Maybe he was less weak and pathetic than she assumed.

"Fucking idiots," he said, in that quiet hiss of his that he used when he was really furious. "Were you really going to perform an Unforgiveable Curse _on the train to school_? I guess you actually are as mentally defective as you look. Get back in the compartment, all you lot."

They obeyed him like children, even Mulciber, who was the same age. Eglantine gave Severus a brief nod. She knew he wouldn't stand to be thanked—he'd find it corny and excessive. He nodded back. Really a master of pleasantries, Severus.

"I hope he doesn't think that was meant to impress me," muttered Lily. "I'm not impressed. Nobody who calls me a Mudblood can ever impress me with anything but their ignorance."

_Snotty cow_, Eglantine thought. She'd have been surprised at herself for thinking this—if it'd been the first time. "I don't think it was _about _you. I think he was more trying to protect them than us."

Lily shrugged one shoulder and stared out the window. Eglantine figured she must still be assuming it was because of herself._ Not _every _step he takes is about you, you know_, she wanted to say. _He's not just an extension of Lily admiration. _And Lily didn't even know about the crush part, Eglantine didn't think. Lily thought her friendship was really _that _important to people. Her world did not revolve around Lily Evans, and she could sense that, twisted and obsessed though Severus may be, his world didn't either.

Eglantine suspected that James Potter's world, however, did, and he was their next visitor, about a half-hour before the train was due to arrive at Hogwarts. He meant it to look nonchalant, almost accidental, that he was just "passing by." But who was he visiting down this way, Mulciber and Wilkes?

"Hullo, Lily," he said, his eyes nearly boring a hole into Lily's scalp. She was still looking out the window. "All right?"

"Yes," she said, smiling and returning her gaze to the window.

James rolled his eyes. Eglantine almost felt bad for him. Almost. He inched into the compartment, not giving up quite yet. "How was your summer?"

"Fine."

"Erm. Mine was too. We—my family and I—erm, just us—we er, went to Crete. Really nice. Bit hot."

"Mm."

"Spent the rest of the summer with Sirius. He finally, er, left home."

"Sirius left home? Why?" This actually caught Lily's attention. "When?"

Eglantine could tell that James was discomfited by Lily's sudden interest—probably wondering if she secretly had a thing for Sirius rather than him. "Erm. Well, he left in July. End of July. But we were away in Crete, so…he sort of waited for us to come back."

"Waited? Where did he _stay_?"

James looked at Eglantine; it was hard to read it, whether he was looking to see if Eglantine would speak up, or whether Sirius had even told him. Had he mentioned, at any point, telling James? She couldn't remember.

"Well, with Eglantine. Figured she'd have said."

_Ugh, no_.

Lily turned towards Eglantine, looking half-irritated, half-wounded. "You never mentioned that Sirius was staying with you."

"Should I have?"

"Well, it's kind of _important_."

"Why, d'you have a crush on him, or something?"

"No!" Lily turned slightly pink.

Without reason, Eglantine was suddenly combating an urge to slap her. "You do! Merlin, Lily, I was _joking_—I didn't realize you actually _do_."

"I don't! I mean, he's—he's _cute_, but—but he's really—obnoxious," she finished lamely. "Why, do _you_?"

"Definitely not. He farts in his sleep. Not that you'd know. _Would _you?" Maybe _that _was why he hadn't told her who he'd kissed before her. Because it'd been Lily.

"No! Look, it's not even a real crush. It's just…he's nice-looking, and he's funny, but—you know, it's just _that_. I don't even really know him. If I did, I probably would think he's as repulsive as you do."

"I do _not _think he's repulsive." She didn't really want James going back and saying that Eglantine thought he was repulsive. Not that James wouldn't be too disappointed to do anything but mope.

"You just said he farts in his sleep. Your face kind of implied that you think that he's gross. Ugh, why are we even _talking _about this? I don't _really _like him. What's important is that he was staying in your house for who knows how long and you never said. Meanwhile, _I _told you things. I thought we were friends."

"We _are _friends."

"Then why did you keep that a secret from me?"

"I don't know."

"There must be some reason."

"Nope."

Lily just rolled her eyes and sighed. "I've got to get to the Prefects' carriage for the meeting. Come on, Claire."

She pushed by James, who just stood there, looking dejected. He seemed not even to be aware of his surroundings. Eglantine knew the feeling.

"You know, I think she secretly likes you much more than she could ever like Sirius. She's never mentioned him," she said, trying to cheer him up. He was a pain in the arse, but he just looked so _depressed_, like someone had just told him his owl got sucked into a jet engine.

"She's mentioned me then?"

"Er—sort of."

"That's a no." James sighed dramatically. _Hnnngh_. _God_, thought Eglantine. _Both him and Sirius go around like bloody Hamlet all the time._ "What do I do wrong?"

"You want an honest answer to that?"

"No! Yes."

"You're kind of a twat to people. If you were a bit more, I dunno the word, _noble_ maybe, she'd fancy you. You're…you know, you're funny, but usually all you do is harass people. Lily's not about that. Fairness is really important to her, and you're not fair, you're elitist."

"I am not _elitist_!"

"You kind of are. And I dunno, maybe you're not, but that's what she sees. She sees you as a snotty, privileged berk who thinks he's better than everyone. You have to prove to her that that's not what you're about."

"But I've _told _her! You—I mean, I don't know if she told you." His nose turned red. "I've told her I liked her before, but I told her on the train home last year, and she kind of…yelled at me. She called me—well, names. Similar to, as you say, 'snotty privileged berk.' And I said that's not who I am, that I'm actually quite nice, and I'd be nice to her, but she didn't believe me. Or care."

She looked at him in genuine astonishment. "Really? It shocks you that that went the way it did? All right, look at it from her perspective. I know it's hard for you, but try. She's seen you pick on her best friend (well, former best friend) mercilessly for going on six years now. He's a poor, scrawny, unendowed sort of fellow, not a lot of friends, so it _seems _like you're going at him for those reasons, instead of…any others you may or may not have. I don't really know your reasoning, but that's what Lily sees. You play pranks on people all the time, but they're usually on younger people, or stupid people, or Peter. Not your peers. And for you to turn around and say, 'Well, I fancy you, so I'd be nice to _you_,' that doesn't really cancel out everything else you've ever done. Especially since you're not doing, you're just talking."

James didn't say anything. He was staring at the carpet. "I picked on Severus because he's—he's not a nice person. I was _trying _to be noble, in a way. To save her from…from him being around her all the time. But I guess—" he swallowed. "I guess, yeah, maybe there's something to that. I mean, I wasn't always that nice to _you_—"

"And I still think you're annoying, and maybe I'm projecting some of what I think onto Lily. But she and I do usually think a lot alike, at least about stuff like that—fairness and the like. But I can tell that you really do like her, and I don't think—I mean, you're obviously not _too _awful of a person, if Sirius and Remus tolerate you—"

"And you would be happier if she focused on me and not Sirius." He was glaring at her. He was actually _glaring _at her. What the hell was this about?

"That has nothing to do with it. The thought never crossed my mind."

"He told me, you know. And—and maybe you're right about Lily and whatnot, but…but part of why I came here isn't even about her."

"Oh?"

"Don't—just _don't_. Don't fuck around with him like you do everyone else, all right?"

"I do not fuck around! I don't know what you're hearing, but I _don't_."

"I don't mean actually…you know what I mean. Don't play him."

"He's more likely to play any girl alive than I am to play him."

James snorted. "Maybe any girl but you. Just leave him alone. I know you don't really think about him, so just leave him alone."

Eglantine rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure. I'll just leave an old family friend alone because James the All-Powerful told me to."

"You'd better."

"Or _what_, exactly?"

"Or I'll make you."

She raised an eyebrow. "No you won't. Let me tell you why: firstly, because it won't work. Secondly, because no matter what Lily may ultimately think of me, you're not going to be doing yourself any favors in her eyes by going all blackmail-y and Severus-like. Thirdly, because if I _really _wanted to, I could convince Lily to go after Sirius."

"No, you couldn't."

"Try me."

He paused to think about this. "_How_—"

"I'm not going to tell you how. Look, I can tell you really like her, so don't push me into doing that. I don't want to, but I would. Don't try to have more control over my life than I do. Nobody has a voice in my life but me."

"Yeah, sure. What about your parents?"

"Mr. Hotshot Quidditch journalist who's always flying around the world, you mean? Or my mum the gossip columnist?"

"Gossip col—wait, your mum is Agnes Quilp? Why did I not know about this?"

"That's not her name, thicko. That's a pen name. She did it so as not to get hate mail."

James was smiling widely. "I can see why you wouldn't mention it. And now that you do, I can see the resemblance."

"_What _resemblance?"

"Nothing." He was still beaming. "It's not a _physical _resemblance, because I don't know what she looks like, I don't _think_. But I could definitely see you being the daughter of a gossip columnist."

"But I'm not gossipy."

"No, but you know everything about everyone, it seems. And you're gossiped _about_."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure they're all talking about me. I don't even _do _anything."

"All right, Eglantine. You don't do anything. See you later."


	9. Chapter 9

Nine

Everything was the same as it has always been inside Hogwarts. Same candles floating overhead in the Dining Hall. Same professors lined up at the high table; same neurotic, newbie Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who'd be gone by next year (this one was called Carleton Swift); same tired, endless Sorting ceremony. God, was it dull. Muggles who thought that wizardry must always be interesting would only have to sit through one or two typical Sorting ceremonies and soon they'd think it was on par with accounting or golf for tedium.

Did anyone really care to see which House each and every short, scrawny eleven-year-old was going to plague with his or her presence? They were all so awkward-looking. Big ears, big noses, odd haircuts. One boy, John Earnshaw, had long, floppy brown hair that reached to mid-back and before he sat down on the Sorting stool he turned around three times and clapped. (And he was in Eglantine's House, gods be praised.) Claire's little sister Julie got Sorted into Ravenclaw, too (she didn't look half as dim as her sister) as did Jacqueline Abbott and the blond acne-cream first year from the train, who bore the awkward name of Gilderoy.

Some of the students—Gryffindors, mainly, it seemed—were waiting eagerly for Dumbledore to speak, though Eglantine hardly cared about what. He never said anything terribly interesting. James and Sirius, and Peter by default, seemed to worship Dumbledore's very toes, though ironically they never seemed to respect his rules; but Eglantine had never liked him. It was one of few opinions she had shared with her aunt and uncle, though her reasons had certainly been different. It wasn't his principles she disliked, it was his personality: his calm eccentricity seemed, to her, to be cowardly. If he had the power to defeat Voldemort the same way he had done Grindelwald, which one might assume he did, why hadn't he already done so? Bertie had done more for that cause than Dumbledore had. He was a figurehead. Hadn't always been, but he was now. She had tried, but she couldn't respect him for whatever conclusions he had come to that enticed him to a life of what seemed like idleness.

He did speak, about how Voldemort's influence was growing, blah blah, and how some of the seventh years might be called to be Aurors, blah blah. Eglantine yawned. It was exactly what might be expected. Unoriginal and, to her, uninspiring. Can't they see through him? she wondered, as the Great Hall erupted into applause. Remus wasn't clapping: he looked preoccupied. Neither were Severus and his cronies.

As the students tucked in to dinner, Eglantine's table was buzzing with news about Voldemort—or, as everybody referred to him, "He Who Must Not Be Named," or "You Know Who." It seemed rather infantile to Eglantine to refer to anybody as "You Know Who." It was how third-year girls referred to boys they fancied. And yet what inspired it was not strictly infantile itself, though it seemed to do nothing but inspire babyish reactions: there was a very real fear underneath it all, an unspoken dread that Voldemort's power would continue to grow, that one day they would perhaps all have only two choices. Serve him or die.

Eglantine didn't believe that. She believed in the third option—always the third option. Life was not black and white; people seemed to gravitate towards thinking that way, towards separating things that couldn't be quantified into categories and pairs, little pockets of control. These were lies, these categories. All this "Dark Arts" business, implying that everybody else practiced "light arts," or whatever on earth the equivalent of supposed goodness was. There were no Dark witches and wizards. There were no good witches and wizards. There were many thousands of normal witches and wizards, those who occupied neither of the uninhabitable poles of Dark and Light, but who dwelt in all the space in between. To go around thinking that some were only evil, and others only good, and some destined for greatness, and some destined for dullness—that seemed to be the only real destiny of these people. They were destined to believe in destiny. The only polarization was between those who believed in the poles and those who didn't.

She thought about this as she ate her pot roast. It was dry; Dumbledore had yammered on too long. To everybody else, his words were the nourishment. They scarcely seemed to notice the food as they talked away, urgent and self-important. She preferred silence and non-desiccated beef, preferably in solitude. She would even happily sacrifice all the food, if only everybody would just shut up.

She had scarcely settled into the girls' dormitory near the Astronomy tower when she began to wonder if perhaps the library was already open. She had never really wondered about it before—the first day had always seemed to offer other options. All those were tired out now, she supposed. She would try to make it to the library.

Sure enough, Madam Pince was there. Eglantine wondered if she ever actually went anywhere else.

"What are you doing here?" croaked Madam Pince. "There aren't any assignments yet." She was regarding Eglantine with extreme suspicion. Eglantine tried to remember if she had ever been especially obnoxious in front of Madam Pince before.

"Er—independent study?"

"You're supposed to be in the dormitories."

"Aren't I at school to learn, Madam Pince?" said Eglantine, with what she hoped would appear to be wide eyes of sparkling innocence.

"You're at school to follow the rules."

"What eloquent training for real life. Fine, I'll go. Might I borrow just one book?"

Madam Pince sighed. "If you must. But make it quick."

Eglantine wasn't exactly familiar with the library—she hadn't tried to make coming here a habit—but she poked through the tall rows of brown until she found a fairly suitable dim, dank corner. Here there was a row of oversized gray books, their bindings crumbling and dangling over the edges of the shelves, with faded gilt writing spelling out the words she was looking for: Legilimency.

"These?" whined Madam Pince, incredulously peering over the stack of ancient books. "I thought just one. You can't have all these."

"Well, which would you recommend? To a person wishing to learn Legilimency."

Madam Pince shook her head. "I don't know that you can learn Legilimency. You either have it, as they say, or you don't."

"Which one will help me figure out if I have it?"

Madam Pince pursed her lips. She pointed to a slightly newer, slightly less crumbly book in the middle of the stack. It was grayish blue, instead of grayish gray. "Legilimency for Beginners. You can borrow it for a week."

"Is a week really enough time—"

"It is if you try, now get out! I'm late to feed Rodney as it is."

"Rodney?"

"Bassett Hound. Are you quite done, Miss Bertrand?"

"Oh, so suddenly you know who I am?"

"I recognize you as the girl who conspired with Lily Evans to plant Dungbombs in James Potter's satchel three years ago. It took me a week to clean up the Arithmancy section."

"Aah." She'd known there was something.

"And even if there hadn't been that, you're a carbon copy of Bertie. Just a little more…" Madam Pince sniffed. "Wild."

"Er, thanks, maybe. I'll see you, Madam Pince."


	10. Chapter 10

Ten

Legilimency would have to wait. Eglantine was scheduled for all the normal classes—Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms with the Gryffindors, Potions with the Slytherins, History of Magic, and Transfiguration. She was taking, of course, Apparation, since she'd be seventeen in October—and, by default, so would everybody except (thank Merlin) Peter, who wasn't seventeen until July. And Alchemy, and—though she hardly needed it—Muggle Studies. She actually couldn't stand Ursus Pulsifer, the Muggle Studies professor. He reeked of feet. Sometimes she fantasized about stealing his job, but then she'd have to work for Dumbledore.

Potions was first. Lovely—a room that was half full of people who wanted to hex her, half-full of people who didn't care what the other half did, and then Severus, who just sort of hovered between the halves, looking disapproving. It was odd, she thought, that she should finally begin to be able to stand him now that he wasn't friends with Lily. Despite knowing why. She didn't really delve into the details, but she felt like she could finally relate to Severus.

The Slytherins didn't care for the fact that Slughorn was fond of Eglantine—almost over-fond, really. It bordered on creepy. Lily had said that he was only a bit grabby with her hair, but Eglantine felt that Slughorn was a sort of insidious hovering spy, always watching people for signs of future fame, his beady little eyes making little wet squick sounds when he blinked. Was there a potion for that? Chronic eye goop? Thinking about it made her wrinkle her nose.

"Sorry, is the smell getting to you? Oh, God. I think I've added too much asphodel." Next to her, Stephen MacMillan was furiously stirring his Draught of Living Death potion—required, as she'd heard from Cam, for all sixth years who wanted to go on to NEWT level—which had turned an inky blue.

"Hm? Oh, no. Sorry. I was just thinking about—something." She sniffed. "Now that you mention it, that stuff reeks. What did you do, Steve?"

"I—maybe it's not the asphodel?"

Eglantine rolled her eyes and sighed. "Tell me exactly what you did."

"Well, I cut up the beans, and I put them—"

"Steve! What the hell were you thinking? You could've blown us all up!"

"Hhh—"

Professor Slughorn swept over, his robes billowing and knocking over one of Avery's vials. "What seems to be the trouble?" He wrinkled his squashy nose. "Phew. Bit foul, what?"

"Steve put his beans in first. Then the asphodel."

Slughorn's eyebrows disappeared beneath his "hair." (Who did he think he was fooling? He was a wizard, and yet he thought people would be fooled by a halfhearted rug that seemed to be made of donkey mane.) "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, Mr. MacMillan. I do suggest pouring out that cauldron and adding a pinch of baby's breath to that water as it goes down the drain. Wouldn't want to explode the pipes!"

"Oh. I—I didn't know she was serious, Professor."

"Of course she is! A nice, honest girl like Miss Bertrand wouldn't lie about an explosive potion! Now, get to the sink, boy! Tidy up!"

Nice, honest girl. She liked to think she was nice—even though she wasn't entirely sure of this—but she really didn't know about honest. Take her performance in Potions, for example. All she'd ever done was position herself strategically. She was diagonally behind Severus, looking up briefly now and then to see what he was doing. She knew how to do everything, naturally. But she'd noticed early on that his potions always seemed to be just a touch better, the way Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon would always be better than anybody else's. He took extra care with the ingredients, doing things with them that nobody else—rushing just to get through it and not fuck up too badly—seemed to cotton onto.

He was crushing the beans under his knife, scribbling something in the margins of the potions book. It was hard not to think of it as a cookbook. Eglantine copied him. She copied the way he stirred his potion. She figured that by now he had to notice, though that one time he'd been out of class (something about a tree; she hadn't really cared), she'd done almost as well without him. He never called her on it, and she never took undue credit. She supposed it was all down to Lily. If she hadn't ever become close to Lily, she would've suffered the same fate as Steve, who had spent an entire month in the dungeon with Slughorn shredding roots because he'd looked over Severus's shoulder at an inopportune moment.

The arrangement suited her. The less attention she actually had to pay to Potions, the more time she could reserve for thinking. The tiny amount of information she had about Crevan's death competed against rather halfhearted daydreams about Remus for her attention.

Something about him did seem beige, now, where before he had been almost tantalizing. He seemed to have lost something: humor, sensitivity, whatever way about him he formerly had. But he was her standby, her constant. When things in a room got too boring, or when things in life got too complicated, there he was, ordinary, a blank canvas for her to paint upon in her mind. She could make him secretly brooding and artistic; she could make him secretly daring and fierce; she could make him such a good kisser she forgot her own name.

The class went on stirring. The clock drew nearer to nine-thirty, and Slughorn told them all to abandon their ladles. He went around examining each potion (and Steve's empty cauldron), unsurprisingly declaring Severus's the best, and Eglantine's the next-best, as usual. And also as usual, Slughorn was rather sparing in his praise of Severus, and lavish in his praise of Eglantine. It was a touch excessive, really, though Eglantine suspected it had nothing to do with any personal attractions of hers—Slughorn just didn't seem the type to care about a young girl's personal attractions, in her opinion—and everything to do with her successful (if absent) journalist parents and her much-lauded older brothers, the fallen hero and the Quidditch king. Even if he didn't see signs of future eminence in Eglantine, he knew they were there in her family.

The class filed out into the hall, the torches crackling on the wall, dispersing. Severus scurried off rather quickly in the direction of the North Tower. Eglantine felt a poke between her shoulder blades and spun around.

Mulciber, Wilkes, and the dopey-looking Goyle stood behind her. Goyle's podgy arms were crossed, and his eyebrow had descended over his beetle-black eyes.

"Nobody's going to stop us now," Goyle said thickly. It was, Eglantine thought, probably the way he said everything, when he could actually encourage his synapses to fire up and create something to say in the first place.

"They aren't? What makes you think I'm not?"

Goyle just snorted—Eglantine, without even beginning in her Legilimency studies, could figure out what would come next. "Because you're a _girl_."

"And you're one small step up from a mountain troll. Explain to me how that gives you any sort of tactical advantage."

He looked confused for a moment. Wilkes nudged him. "I don't hafta explain _nothing _to you."

She rolled her eyes. "All right, then. Show me what you're working with. Just you. No help."

"_Vespertilio Mucosi!"_ Goyle managed to stammer out a fairly decent-looking Bat-Bogey Hex, but rather than hitting Eglantine, it hit the gargoyle at the base of the stairs.

"_Chirolutris!_"

A glittering turquoise flash exploded over Goyle's hands. Mulciber and Wilkes looked back and forth between the two of them, puzzled. Then Goyle began to clap. His hands joined—rather endearingly, given that he was a slightly antagonistic, goofy-looking lout—beneath his chin, making movements as if he were removing bivalves from their shells, and then he began clapping again.

"_Ebullopygia!"_

A swarm of red bubbles gathered around Goyle's hindquarters. Beneath his robes appeared a sphere like a beach ball where his bottom had been. Wilkes snorted. Before Goyle knew what was happening, both of his allies were giggling, slapping his bottom, which bounced around like a beach ball.

He kept clapping.

"Now, now, break up the—" Slughorn emerged from the door, arms spread. He saw Goyle's rear end. "What is the—what is the meaning of—how extraordinary. Is this—" he seemed to be suppressing a smirk "—Eglantine, this was you, wasn't it?"

"It was, Professor."

"Excellent work. Interesting choice." He cleared his throat. "But—er—I must give you detention, Miss Bertrand, for dueling in the corridors."

"I was hardly _dueling,_ Professor. And what about them?"

Slughorn bit his lip. "Well…whether owing to your, er, hexing prowess, Miss Bertrand, or rather to, er, Mr. Goyle's lack therof…he doesn't seem to have actually _hit _you with anything."

Eglantine couldn't deny that. Goyle had been lucky that his wand hadn't backfired. That was probably a great improvement.

Goyle snickered, not seeming to notice that peals of mirth were still intermittently escaping from Mulciber and Wilkes, and that Wilkes was now bouncing a quill off of his bottom.

"He's very kindly calling you a thicko, Goyle," Eglantine snapped. "He's saying that if you weren't such a useless git, you might actually have been worth punishing. You can't even misbehave correctly."

"You deserve detention," pouted Goyle. "You cost my brother his job!"

Eglantine rolled her eyes. "Again with the job. It's not my fault that your entire family is inept."

"You _tricked_ him!"

"I did no such thing—"

"Students! Students," said Slughorn, using the unctuously benevolent voice Eglantine hated, the one he reserved for times in which he wanted to stand as a Figure of Authority and Wisdom. "Please don't quarrel. Haven't you got classes to get to?"

Eglantine was late for History of Magic, which she knew perfectly well. She'd brought her Legilimency book with her, since without it she was likely to fall asleep.

"I hardly think it matters on Goyle's end, Professor. You don't need classes in order to become a Death Eater stooge. Which is all any of these three will ever be."

"That's a serious accusation, Miss Bertrand—"

"The truth is always serious, Professor. You were right. I'm late. See you after classes."


	11. Chapter 11

Eleven

Even Legilimency couldn't preserve her consciousness through History of Magic, and Defense Against the Dark Arts hobbled along excruciatingly, Carleton Swift babbling and stammering on unconvincingly about his credentials as a vampire hunter. Her cousin Victor's wife Anastasia had once killed a vampire, and she was five-foot nothing, spoke in a little-girl lisp, and was as bony as a baby bird. She was more believable as a vanquisher of the undead than Carleton Swift.

She returned to the library after class. Its vaulted ceilings were still loomingly silent, almost deafeningly echoing with white noise. Boyden Clearwater was there, his nose almost literally _in _his book, his dark curls tumbling over the text. He was very serious, Boyden. He wanted to be Minister of Magic one day, but most people secretly thought he would end up fetching the Minister's robes from the tailor's.

She sat in a more-than-usually quiet corner, one out of the way, almost so as to be wholly forgotten, and opened the book. It smelled sweet, like fresh-cut hay in a field.

_To become an adept Legilimens is not to learn to read another's mind_, the book began. "Well, fuck _that_," Eglantine muttered. Somewhere, Madam Pince shushed her.

_To become an adept Legilimens is not to learn to read another's mind. The mind is not a book: it is never flat, two-dimensional, or unchangeable. To navigate the avenues of another person's mind—especially as so few of us are intimately acquainted with our own—is the most subtle magic of all, according to many. To navigate the mind of another human being is to be suddenly catapulted into a strange, languageless land, with no map and no guidebook. To become a successful Legilimens is to learn the compass of this land, the ways to sift through the information thrown at you in order to find what is relevant. To become a successful Legilimens, you will be able to pull individual thoughts and memories for your own perusal not like books from a shelf, but like pulling one individual minnow from a sea of thousands._

"That sounds amazingly fucking tedious," thought Eglantine. Sifting? Thousands of godforsaken minnows? Who had written this stupid textbook, anyway?

She flipped through the table of contents, and the chapters. There were several diagrams that she couldn't begin to understand. Then something caught her eye—_Misconceptions concerning Dark Magic._

She read on.

_Due to the unfortunate circumstance of many Dark wizards being Legilimens, many people erroneously believe Legilimency to be among the Dark Arts. This is far from the case. Legilimency has many practical and legal uses, as well as—perhaps more pertinently—the use of Legilimency to _combat _the Dark Arts. Occlumency is not enough, the authors of this book feel, to successfully evade a Dark Legilimens. One must understand the science, almost be a practitioner oneself, to truly evade the machinations of a skilled Legilimens who approaches one with malicious intent._

She yawned, and flipped back to the Table of Contents to find the bloody instructions. Was this all a load of theory? No, there it was, right in the back, in an appendix. "Application of Legilimency."

_To apply what you have learned, simply point your wand levelly at your target, and say, "Legilimens." The navigation of the target's mind is entirely yours. No mind is alike. With luck, what you have learnt in this book will allow you to glean useful information._

_Be forewarned, this is not a spell likely to make you popular with friends and neighbors. Use only when necessary._

_That's it? Point my wand and say _Legilimens_? They need a whole book to tell me that?_ thought Eglantine. She needed someone to practice on. The only other person here was Boyden, and damned if the first mind she ever read – not that Legilimency was "reading minds," oh no – was Boyden Clearwater's.

Then, life handed her a perfect gift, the type of which an individual does not receive more than one or two in his or her lifetime. The exact thing she needed appeared at the moment in which she needed it.

"Hullo, Peter. Getting an early start on studying, eh?"

"Er—yes, I suppose. Are—er—you haven't seen Remus and James, have you? I—er—I've been looking for them—"

"No. But come here, Peter. There's a spell I need to practice. It won't hurt, I promise."

His eyes narrowed. Even the stupid could be suspicious, she supposed. "What is it?"

"Legilimency. I'm learning how to read—how to see into other people's minds."

"You—" he squeaked.

"But it's going to be the first thing I've ever tried it. I probably won't see anything I don't already know. _Please_, Peter? I'll help you with one of your Transfiguration lessons." Peter was the worst at Transfiguration. Once he'd turned a French press coffee-maker into a rather tacky glass unicorn. It was supposed to be a scone.

"Erm. All right. But you—you c-can't tell anybody if you see anything embarrassing."

She rolled her eyes. "Of course." She glanced over at Madam Pince. "Maybe we'd best go into the hallway. Won't take a moment."

Peter followed her out, chewing on his lip. The hallway was deserted: students were either in class or somewhere outdoors, enjoying their freedom before homework kicked in. She didn't have time for Peter's uncertainty. She wanted to know whether she was even capable of it or not.

"Stand over there. Please."

"Look, Eggs, I really don't—"

"_Legilimens!"_

The book was right. It was strange, unnavigable. There was a kind of purple haze, and she felt like she was walking on butter, as if any moment she might fall and slip backwards. She reached out her wand and pulled.

Peter was in footed pajamas, about six years old, seated cross-legged beside a tall Christmas tree decked with multicolored fairy lights. His father was wearing Buddy Holly glasses and red flannel pajamas, sitting on a plaid-patterned couch, smoking; his mother, whom he resembled remarkably, was in a ruffled pink nightgown, her fluffy brown hair tied with a pink bow.

"Peter, darling, do you like it?" She saw more than heard the words. It was as in dreams, when one knows that a person is talking but doesn't necessarily _hear _it.

"Of course I do." Peter looked just as uncertain and troubled as he had when Eglantine had asked him to let her do this.

"Then what's the problem?" snapped his father. "You certainly don't look as if you liked it."

"I—er—" Peter removed from a large cardboard box an immense gray cat, both fat and fluffy. The cat hissed and scratched at Peter's arm, and Peter dropped him. The cat went running beneath the tree, knocking off one of the ornaments.

"I don't like cats. They scare me."

His father rolled his eyes. "Really, Peter. It's just a cat. It won't hurt you."

This was boring. She held her wand out again.

Peter was opening the front door. He placed the cat on the front stoop and closed the door, then sat down on the stairs. Hours later, his parents arrived home. Peter informed them that the cat had escaped and that he'd searched for him and been unable to find him.

She was dimly aware now that Peter was trying to push her out. The environment was humming with random memories, with apprehension and pointless details, trying to crowd out the original pictures of what happened to the cat.

_Fuck you, Peter_, she thought. _I'm staying._

The cat was lying in one of Peter's father's shoeboxes. Dead. It looked far smaller in death, less soft. Like a stuffed toy with all the filling pulled out.

"Poor Figgins," said Peter's mother. She was crying lightly – merely sentimental, not distraught. Peter tried to push her out again.

Instead she wound up merely moving forward in the memory (or was it backward?) to Peter and his father sitting in Peter's bedroom. It was a small room, cozy, with old-fashioned mustard wallpaper and a series of posters of Quidditch teams. A leatherbound copy of _The Borrowers _sat beneath a glass of milk at Peter's bedside.

"Be honest with me, now, Peter," his father was saying, his voice cross. "Did you let the cat out on purpose?"

"No. Of course not. Why would I?"

Mr. Pettigrew scoffed. "Well, it's not really any secret that you didn't like him, Peter."

"I _did _like him, I was just afraid," Peter pouted. "And anyway, I wouldn't have just let him out. I never would've wanted him to get hit by a car."

"And this is the absolute truth, Peter?"

"Yes. I swear."

Mr. Pettigrew gave a curt nod. "All right. I—"

Something else pulled her out, not Peter. It was like waking up – all of a sudden your dream is gone. She could remember this far better than most dreams, though. Dreams had a tendency to evaporate back into the unconscious, but this was as if she had Apparated somewhere and back: it was disconcerting, but real.

"What the hell is going on here?" It was Remus. Great. Of all people… His Prefect's badge glimmered smugly on his robe, making Eglantine feel like a career criminal.

"Practicing Legilimency. Hello, to you too."

"Legilimency? Why?" He looked somewhat suspicious.

"Do you want the honest answer, or the normal one?"

"Are they suddenly two different things for you, honest and normal?"

She rolled her eyes. "I meant the sarcastic one, cleverclogs. The honest answer, for your information, is that I am practicing it as a matter of self-defense. And also because I'm really curious to find out who murdered my uncle, and it may prove to be a useful skill as far as that sort of hobby goes."

Remus narrowed his eyes. "Right. Why are you practicing on Peter, again?"

"He was there," she said with a shrug. "I didn't even know if I'd be successful. Mainly I wanted to see if the incantation worked."

"You could have _left_!" spat Peter. "You wouldn't—wouldn't _leave_!"

"Come off it, Peter. It was practice. I don't give a shit about your stupid cat." This wasn't strictly true. She hadn't expected that sort of thing from Peter, somehow.

"Still. You could've left."

"Oh, goodness, sorry, Peter. Next time I get the urge to invade your boring memories, I'll bring an egg timer."

"A what?"

"Merlin's beard, you might be the biggest imbecile—"

"What the hell, Eglantine?" Remus snapped. "If I catch you practicing Legilimency on Peter again—" (The Peter in question was wide-eyed and incredulous, overjoyed that for once somebody who had wronged him was actually getting talked to about it.)

"Don't worry, I won't. It was a shit time. Anyway, I thought we were friends, you and me. More so than with that berk over there."

Remus's expression softened. "We are." She couldn't help but notice that there seemed to be something unsaid. She couldn't practice Legilimency, apparently, so she wasn't allowed to know what it was. "But more than who I'm _friends _with, I'm—well, I'm a Prefect. If I saw what I did and failed to react, I could be…I dunno, put on warning or something?"

"Don't you trust me not to be doing anything shady? Especially in a fairly public hallway?"

"Trust has nothing to do with the way things are now, I'm afraid. Not between me and you," he added, seeing her become instantly enraged. "In general. With the way the world is. You never know about people."

Eglantine snorted. "Horseshit. Legilimency or not, intuition is pretty much infallible. What does your intuition say about me?" He hesitated. "Come on. Spit it out."

He seemed to be struggling with framing what he wanted to say. "You aren't…bad. You're very—er—passionate, perhaps a bit—er—selfish, but not bad."

"Why does everybody always describe me as selfish?"

"Because you're selfish."

"Why do people get the urge to _tell _me?"

"Because you know that there are more important qualities than being or not being selfish." Remus cleared his throat. "Now—er—ahem, it's nearly dinnertime. We all ought to go down to the Great Hall."

"Yeah. I've just got to run back and get my books. You two go on."

Eglantine didn't quite run back and get her books. She returned to the library and sat there in front of her books and thought.

She had mentioned intuition because, while the front part of her brain, the public part, was engaged in conversation with Remus, the private part was subtly slogging along, partially distracted, occasionally shouting at her with flashes of realization. Her intuition was telling her that what had happened with Peter's cat wasn't just a childhood caper, that it was somehow significant. It told her something about his character.

_Everybody lies_, the private part of her brain had said, _but not everybody's lie results in something dying. _And then the private part of her brain had shouted at her, _serial killers! _Although serial killers usually were directly involved in animals' demise, indirectly causing one wasn't all that far removed. So maybe Peter wouldn't be a serial killer, but maybe he would be a serial accident-encourager. She had visions of him casually hip-checking her so she fell down flights of stairs.

The memory hadn't pointed to any culpability on the cat's part. It hadn't shown him doing anything but being a cat—something of a pain-in-the-ass cat, maybe, but not Lucifer with claws and a fluffy tail. All she had seen was Peter's fear of something he couldn't control. And he had subjected it to a force it could not control. That didn't exactly speak well for his character.

_Maybe you're judging him too harshly_, she said to herself. _He was just a kid. Kind of a stupid, repressed sort of kid. Maybe what he did wasn't that bad._

Her stomach gurgled, both in protest of this revisionist outlook, and also because she was just sitting there in the library when she ought to have been eating. She sighed and picked up the books, finally—late—joining the Ravenclaws at their table in the Great Hall.


End file.
